Santa Elena

Cast of Characters

Santa Elena

Overlooking the Rio Grande, Santa Elena was the village where Pablo Acosta was born, and it was where he died following a surprise police assault from the American side of the river. The village, which is across from Big Bend National Park, has electricity, but it is without paved streets and running water. Though many of the villagers continue farming, this hamlet of about 300 had become a center for smuggling drugs into the United States after Pablo Acosta became the most powerful drug trafficker in the region. Because Santa Elena is difficult to reach from the Mexican side, some of the villagers with border crossing cards leave their vehicles on the American side and travel to upriver to Mexican towns like Ojinaga by driving first through Big Bend National Park and then on Texas highways.

(Click photo to enlarge.)

A village situated on the Rio Grande, Santa Elena has a population of three hundred. Pablo Acosta was born here amid the poverty that still marks much of rural Mexico. Later, he used the isolated river village to smuggle narcotics into the United States. He also came here in times of trouble because of Santa Elena's apparent impregnability and the loyalty he commanded among the villagers. (Photo courtesy of Carolyn Cole)

(Click photo to enlarge.)

The village of Santa Elena as seen from the cockpit of one of the Mexican police helicopters that launched an attack on Pablo Acosta from the American side of the Rio Grande. Acosta was trapped in an adobe house seen in the lower left of the photograph, across from a basketball court that also served as the town square. Acosta's adobe is partly hidden by trees.

Pablo Acosta

Amado Carrillo Fuentes

Marco DeHaro

Mimi Webb Miller

David Regela

Comandante Guillermo Gonzalez Calderoni

Mat Perez

Ojinaga

Santa Elena

Cast of Characters

Santa Elena