They said the sheriff of that county was La Puerta, (the door), that he controls everything, he noted. The course turned toward Cerocahui on a footpath built by drug traffickers to carry out their crops. And when cocaine starts flowing across the Mexican border like never before, Robert dives in headfirst. . His mother had been a running champion in her day, and one of her sisters was the mother of Arnulfo, his greatest competitor. There, it also became common to see Tarahumara children begging or selling candy and key chains on the streets. When I visited Chambers at his office in January, his desk was makeshift: two long folding tables down the hall from a few other lawyers in a one-story brick building on the main street. Nobody was warming up when he arrived; the Tarahumara dont stretch. Born in Wood County, near the Oklahoma border, on Feb. 23, 1946, Thompson was raised in Marathon, east of Marfa. Find Robert Chambers in Midland, TX - phone, address, email. Silvino, with his farmland afflicted by unrelenting drought, was one of the desperate ones, so he signed on to tote drugs. 1992 Press Photo Grand Isle Mayor Andy Valence addressing the City Council . It was just disbelief. darkness lifted just beyond the otherwise dreary concrete plaza, revealing the fertile valley that gives Cerocahui its name: between two mountains. The slope up the mountainside was rocky and dusty, the soil eroded from years of logging and grazing. Thompson in a portrait with his jail staff. Report this listing. Hes a good man and has led a good life, she said to a packed courthouse in Pecos. The 2,421 pounds of cocaine later would test to be 93 percent pure, and was worth about $50 million. Silvino followed the creek, skirting red-and-white fields of poppy. It had once served as an outpost for tourists exploring the natural beauty of the surrounding canyons, which helped keep it relatively tranquil until a Sinaloa bosss nephew was murdered there, in late 2014. More than five hundred Tarahumara, Silvino included, resolved to carry on anyway, and the mayor agreed to a version that cut out the downriver loop, where the major shoot-out had occurred. Uriques head of tourism watched in tears as Tarahumara runners collapsed. Then, with the path hugging a creek, he entered tiny Porochi. Chambers, a violent, lawless man long suspected of drug trafficking, had a remote family ranch in south Presidio County, across the border from San Antonio del Bravo, a hotbed of narcotics activity. Together with her father, an activist, musician, and poet known as Makawi, she pleaded for government officials in Chihuahua to help prevent drug traffickers from stealing their land and their water. The Chambers' gift creates the J. Robert Chambers '89 and Kimberly A. It may have been thirty. Silvino couldnt compete in the U.S. because of his arrest record, but he still needed to race to remain financially free of the cartels, so he often stuck to races closer to home, like the upcoming ultramarathon in Cerocahui, which included a four-thousand-foot ascent up a road out of Urique. It was a twenty-minute drive downhill to the square, which Silvino would be running back up for the first leg of the race: these six miles were a steep climb of 1,500 feet. Federal and state drug enforcement agents arrested Glyn Robert Chambers and the popular sheriff of Presidio County, Rick Thompson, after an informant tipped them off to a red horse trailer containing 2,400 pounds of cocaine on the fairgrounds in Marfa. He passed fields with corn stalks as tall as the cabins beside them, and a few loose cows and goats. He attended school in Alpine, Texas, where he later bought a ranch. Makawi had also met with the wives of those who, like Sebastian Vega, were in prison in the U.S. Word was spreading that the sicarios wanted to eliminate the two. Of course, drug traffickers also know this. Related:President Ford's visit to San Antonio included culinary oops. Thompson was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole, but a change in sentencing guidelines led to his eventual release in April of 2018. Federal agents and others had learned that his nickname in Mexico was La Puerta, the door to smuggling. During the day, they slept beneath frayed creosote bushes, concealing their bags nearby, and at night they trudged north toward the freeway, avoiding rattlesnakes, coyotes, and most of all, la migra, the Border Patrol. The result, Stinson said, was an outcome he did not entirely agree with. She sometimes joked with Chambers that he didnt know where his grandfather was buried, but he did. AGE 60s Robert Nicklos Chambers Lolita, TX View Full Report Used To Live In Relatives There, they removed 40 heavy sacks, each marked with a blue polo player, the signature of a Colombian drug cartel. Robert and Kimberly both received bachelor's degrees in business administration from Texas A&M and were members of the Fellows program. Ponton, a defense attorney, was hired by Chambers for a weapons charge and suddenly found himself defending a man busted with a ton of cocaine. Up here, he realized, right before the 2008 Semana Santa celebrations, assassins from the Sinaloa cartel had kidnapped around a dozen people from Uriquethe chief of police, other officers, government officialsand beheaded all but two, whom they sent back to town, stripped naked and hands tied, to tell the story. View Robert H Chambers's profile for company associations, background information, and partnerships. Vega readily told him what had happenedas he did to the agents who arrested him, along with all but one in his groupbut when Chambers described his offense, Vega couldnt understand why the charges were so severe. At the bottom of the canyon road, the asphalt resumed at a desolate village called Ruidosa. To meet the surging demand for heroin in the United States, they also began seizing additional farmland in order to increase poppy cultivation. It turned out to be people burning salt cedar, an invasive species that saps water from the earth. Robert Chambers Research Associate Email r.chambers@ids.ac.uk Telephone +44 (0)1273 915723 On this page Academic links Research Opinions Publications Professor Robert Chambers has a background in biology, history and public administration. Thus began a shocking small-town drama that quickly turned Marfa on its head and sent the sheriff to federal prison. Dominguez said he also has a troubled relationship with the DEA, and that he, too, is whispered by some as being corrupt. Any other way, Chambers learned, and the courthouse would be backed up for years. But in the nineties, as Mexican cartels rose in power relative to their Colombian counterpartswho preferred to traffic through South FloridaWest Texas became even more essential. Listing provided by TMLS The 1986 case was an extremely high-profile one, full of exactly the sorts of twists and turns that kept people interested. The squat white, Thirty minutes later, the second finisher arrived, and Silvino three minutes after him. During the race, the slower runners tended to set the early pace, while the closers bided their time. For finishing third, Silvino earned 8,000 pesos, enough to remain free of the cartels, at least for a while longer. Show Phone. AKA: Robert C Chambers, Claude Chambers, Bob Chambers Work: - Electrical Contractor, Amarillo Construction LLC - Chief Executive Officer College: TEXAS STATE TECH COLLEGE WEST TEXAS High School: TASCOSA HIGH SCHOOL View Reputation Profile Robert Wayne Chambers , 59 Lives in Leander, TX AKA: Robert W Chambers Almost like brothers, one observer said. It was a quick-paying job, and it would help their village. The Tarahumara would know how to survive this. In the end, it was Chambers who used Thompson. After drug traffickers had taken over the ejido in Basihuare, Makawi had given an interview to a newspaper in Chihuahua, describing the situation and the growing recruitment of Tarahumara youth into organized crime. Tarahumara is a Spanish corruption of the tribes name, Rarmuri, meaning ones with light feet or foot runners.. They discovered what they believed to be a large load of cocaine covered by several bales of hay and empty feed sacks, Stinson testified. No one, even back then, would have trusted someone with that quantity of drugs, unless they had a reliable track record. The villagers had danced, and their children had tossed handfuls of water toward the sky, asking their god Onorame for help, but relief had not come. Thompson was very popular in Marfa, which back then was a gritty, down-in-the-boot-heels ranching town of about 2,500 people, a far cry from todays hip cultural mecca, popular with wealthy New Yorkers and Californians. It operated along the Rio Grande from El Paso to Alpine, from 1988 to 1992. Still, of the dozens and dozens of clients hed defended, it was Vega, and the plight of the Tarahumara, that stuck with him. All rights reserved. Below are the results we could find for Robert Chambers. He read about villages that had no electricity or running water and that were full of ex-felons. Robert Chambers grew up on the border in south Presidio County, where his mother taught in a small school in Candelaria. After the news broke of Thompsons possible link to the horse trailer, his supporters, including law officers and judges, rallied around him, convinced it all was a mistake or a setup. When they neared the San Isidro Lodge, Silvino was in fourth but still in range of the leaders. People who think that are mentally unstable. Most of the visiting runners, who had come from 23 countries, made their way out under military escort. The only difference is that cops carry badges, he said. Though the Tarahumara largely kept to themselves, poverty and hunger made them targets for narcos looking for mules willing to make the demanding trek to designated drug drop-off points in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. Soon after, in a sealed plea deal, Thompson pleaded guilty to one drug count and prosecutors agreed to recommend a 10-year prison term. Most of the visiting runners, who had come from 23 countries, made their way out under military escort. Silvino remembered the women in Huisuchi who used to weave baskets out of the pine needles. Still, racing never provided a stable income for Silvinoprize money wasnt guaranteedand most of the Tarahumara fared far worse. At the aid station, he declined water and collected a paper bracelet to confirm he had passed. Others long had expressed doubts about Thompson, including Jack McNamara, publisher of the Nimby News in Alpine, who was critical of Thompsons leadership of the West Texas Multi-County Narcotics Task Force. He was in third place. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. He had grown up on the ancient tales of men who sprinkled bone dust on the course the night before, thought to induce fatigue in your competitors. He was doing this stuff and they never knew. 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