To compound the Indians' plight, the Mexican army has been summarily arresting the small-time (and usually reluctant) Tarahumara growers, while the kingpins behind the operations-the caciques-have seldom been caught. At the same time, U.S. environmental groups say, Mexican authorities have repeatedly sprayed the Tarahumara backcountry with herbicides such as paraquat, wiping out rare butterflies and contaminating local water supplies and plant life-which presents particular hazards for the Tarahumara, who eat more than 220 wild plant species and use another 300 for medicinal purposes. As Bustillos put it, "The Indians are being persecuted by the narcos and by the persecutors of the narcos."

       Rarely does a week pass, Bustillos claims, when CASMAC doesn't learn about several more Tarahumara who have been killed or tortured by the narcotraficantes. The death toll in the remote community of Coloradas de la Virgen alone is up to 39 since 1991. And the few reliable statistics that CASMAC has been able to gather about the drug violence in the Sierra may in alilikelihood underestimate the problem, since many incidents go unreported and the Tarahumara seldom file death certificates.

       According to the federal attorney general's office in Chihuahua City, much of the carnage has been caused by the "cowboys" of Artemio Fontes, one of the eight drug lords now operating in the Sierra. The son of a large family of mestizo hillbillies with an unsavory history of gunslinging and internecine feuds, Fontes got his start in the drug trade in Coloradas 29 years ago and now lives in ostentatious impunity in a guarded mansion in Chihuahua City.

       The attorney general's office had issued an arrest warrant for Fontes, but when officers showed up at his estate one morning last September, he emerged in his bathrobe and slippers and produced a letter of general amnesty, signed by a federal judge, that effectively granted him immunity from prosecution. As the federal prosecutor in Chihuahua City, Alberto Jardf, lamented to me, "We have a problem with judges letting people go."

       Coloradas de la Virgen, perched on the rim of the stupendous Barranca de Sinforosa, was simply too dangerous to visit, Bustillos told me. Most of its 483 Tarahumara families had fled, and apart from the Fontes pisto/eros, the place was a ghost town.

       A year ago, Bustillos had had a close call in Coloradas. Driving out of town, he found the road blocked by a pickup truck. A few Fontes cowboys were leaning on the vehicle, drinking beer. "They taunted me and invited me to fight," he said, "but I sat quietly with my gun at my side, and after 45 minutes they let me through."

       His uncle Moises Bustillos, a local CASMAC organizer, was not so lucky. Last July, five men who allegedly worked for the cartel accosted him as he was walking along the road near the town of Yoquivo. "They forced a screwdriver into his arms, legs, ankles, and groin," Bustillos said, without emotion. "Then they buried him alive and left him for dead. It took him four days to struggle free, but he couldn't walk, and after ten days of living on berries and leaves, somebody found him."

       The drug terrorism in the Sierra Madre is now part of a broader national crisis across Mexico. Practically the whole society has been touched. All over the republic-in Oaxaca and Guerrero, Sonora and Veracruz-marijuana and, in some areas, poppies have become the principal cash crops. Many in the capital are genuinely worried that Mexico is fast becoming Colombianized. Well-placed officials in Mexico City told me that the assassination last year of Luis Donaldo Colosio, presidential candidate from the ruling PRI party, and that of PRI general secretary Francisco Ruiz Massieu six months later were almost certainly drug related. A key architect of the assassinations, it was widely believed, was Juan Garcia Abrego, the head of the Gulf Cartel, the most powerful in Mexico.

       A member of the capital elite who grew up in Colombia suggested to me that the only reason the drug violence in Mexico had not yet reached the level of that in his native land was that Mexican society was so corrupt. "As long as the judges keep taking bribes, there is no need to kill them," he said. "The few high-minded citizenslike the police chief of Tijuana, who was killed last spring because he was investigating Colosio's assassination too conscientiously-don't last long."

       OR LIKE EDWIN BUSTILLOS, I .thought, as we stopped off at CAS.MAC's offices on a quiet, upscale, residential street in Chihuahua City. Here was a man who had no wife or children, no attachments-a deceptively mild-mannered agricultural engineer who, the more I came to know him, impressed me with his extraordinary courage. Part Tarahumara himself, Bustillos identified strongly with his Indian ancestry but was also a skillful modern operator, accomplished at seeking environmental grants, winning over local politicians to halt the construction of ill-advised logging roads, and using the justice system to combat the timber barons and the drug lords.

       From his modest headquarters here, Bustillos and his staff of three, operating on an annual budget of $80,000, work on projects ranging from introducing environmentally sound farming techniques to saving the endangered thick-billed parrot, which inhabits old-growth forests. In recent months, CASMAC has lobbied successfully for an amendment to the Chihuahua state constitution guaranteeing the rights of indigenous people, blocked several illegal logging operations, and overseen the eradication of 250 acres of illicit crops. And in 1994, working with various U.S. environmental groups, CASMAC stopped a $90 million World Bank road-building project that would have given Mexican logging companies increased access to four billion board feet of Sierra timber.

       But mostly the CASMAC staff is involved in basic human rights work: providing safe haven for terrorized Indians, for example, or collecting affidavits to expedite the prosecution of various pisto/eros of the drug lords. It is, to say the least, perilous work. Bustillos claims he receives as many as SO anonymous calls a week, often waking him in the middle of the night. "Edwin, take care of yourself, because you're in danger," the voice will say. "What are you helping those lazy Indians for? You can make more money with us."

       For his safety, the attorney general's office has at times provided Bustillos with bodyguards, and he now keeps a nine-millimeter pistol at his side. "Bustillos is a brave and laudable man," federal prosecutor Alberto Jardi told me. "I have the utmost respect for his work. We could use 20 more like him."

       "Why are you doing this?" I asked Bustillosa little later, as we passed through the adobe slums of Chihuahua City and headed toward the Sierra Madre in a Jeep Wagoneer with shot suspension, lurching like a motorboat in a choppy sea.

       Softly, and without self-congratulation, he said, "Becal.ise I think the objective of being on this earth is to be useful." Then Bustillos, who is no friend of the Catholic Church, pointedly added, "But I am not religious."

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