The Defiant Mexican's Part 1

Outside the home, they found four bodies. Cautiously, and with their weapons drawn, the troops continued inspecting the exterior and found two more gunmen wounded and unconscious, but alive.

Inside the house only one body was found, riddled with bullets and with two weapons by his side. The body was identified as Don Alejo Garza Tamez, the owner of the ranch and a highly respected businessman in Nuevo Leon.

Upon further inspection of the interior, Marines found weapons and ammunition at every window and door. This allowed them to reconstruct how, just hours prior, the battle had played out.

Marines searched for more bodies inside the house, but none were to be found. It seemed hard to believe that one person, armed only with hunting rifles, had caused so many casualties on the attackers.

Dozens of spent shells and the smell of gunpowder gave proof of the tenacity of the man who fought to the end in defines, of not only his ranch, but his dignity.

In the end, it was deduced the man had created his own defense strategy to fight alone, placing weapons at every door and window.

The story began in the morning of Saturday November 13th, when a group of armed gunmen went to deliver an ultimatum to Don Alejo Garza, he had twenty four hours to leave his property and turn it over to the gunmen or suffer the consequences.

Using the diplomacy he had acquired over nearly eight decades of life, Don Alejo flatly announced that not only would he not be surrendering his property, but that he would be waiting for them.

When the men had left, Don Alejo gathered his workers and ordered them to take Sunday off, he wanted to be alone.

He dedicated the rest of that Saturday to taking stock of his weapons and ammunition and creating a military style fortress defines strategy for his home.

The night of Sat the 13th was long and restless, much like his past hunting adventures, Don Alejo woke early. Shortly after 4 am the motors of various trucks could be heard entering the property from a distance.

Marines who investigated the scene could only imagine how it was that morning, armed men, their impunity secured, confident they would soon be owners of yet another property. Nobody or almost nobody, could hold out against a group of heavily armed gunmen. Only Don Alejo.

The trucks entered the ranch and took up positions surrounding the house. The gunmen got out of their trucks, fires shots in the air, and announced they came to take possession of the ranch. They were expecting the terrified occupants to run out, begging for mercy with their hands in the air.

But things didn't go as expected. Don Alejo welcomed them with bullets, the entire army of gunmen opened fire at the same time. Don Alejo seemed to multiply, he seemed to be everywhere. The minutes would have seemed endless to those who had seen him as easy prey. Various gunmen were killed on sight. The others, in rage and frustration, intensified the attack by swapping out their assault rifles for grenades.

When everything finally fell silent, the air was left heavy with gunpowder. The holes left in the walls and windows attested to the violence of the attack. When they went in search of what they had assumed was a large contingent, the were surprised to find only one man, Don Alejo.

The surviving gunmen did not take over the ranch. Thinking the Military would arrive at any moment, they decided to run. They left behind what they thought were six corpses, but two of their gunmen had survived.

Shortly after, the Marines arrived and methodically reconstructed the events. A lone rancher, a man who worked a lifetime to be able to enjoy the fruits of his labor, such as his ranch, had defended it to his death.

In the last hunt of his life, Don Alejo surprised the group of assassins who wanted to impose the law of the jungle on him as they had on the state.

Mexico City - Jesus Blancornelas, the pioneering border journalist who braved assassination attempts and death threats to expose the inner workings of the Tijuana's murderous drug cartels, died Thursday of natural causes, he was 70.

Suffering for months from the effects of stomach cancer, Blancornelas died in a hospital in Tijuana, the city where his ZETA magazine, founded in 1980, had earned him fame as the spiritual godfather of modern Mexican journalism.

in 1997, after daring to first publish the photograph of drug lord Ramon Arellano Felix, Blancornelas escaped an assassination attempt by cartel hit men that left four bullets in him, his bodyguard was killed.

He never sold out, and he always stayed relevant, said Francisco Bazan Penaloza, President of a Tijuana Lawyers association. With his work, he raised up Mexico in the eyes of the world.

Blancornelas wrote about the drug cartels for decades, even as the mafias intensified their war on muckraking journalists who dared to report on their activities.

Today there are cities where journalists work as if walking through a minefield, Blancornelas said in a speech last may accepting his second national journalism prize, Mexico's highest journalism honor. Other companions work every day watchful of tragedy, we should show our solidarity with them. They are going through hard times

Born in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi, Blancornelas began his career as a sports writer in the mid 1950's. He moved to Tijuana in the 1960's.

His stories on the corruption of border officials forced him out of three newspapers before he co-founded the weekly ABC in 1977. His exposes riled Baja state officials so much that they sent police to take over ABC's office in 1979 on the pretext of intervening in a labor dispute.

Blancornelas fled to San Diego and unsuccessfully applied for political asylum in the United States. In San Diego, he co-founded Zeta with colleague Hector Felix Miranda in 1980. They distributed the magazine across the border and eventually returned to Tijuana.

In 1985, a Zeta cover story on a warehouse filled with Marijuana and guarded by local police broke the story of the arrival of the Arellano Felix brothers, who would become the leaders of the Tijuana drug cartel.

Blancornelas would say later he did not realise the significance of the story until plainclothes police officers bought all 20,000 copies of the magazine in a clumsy effort to stifle the news. Zeta republished the issue, with the headline "Censored" blaring on the cover.

Zeta exposed the collusion of local officials with the increasingly powerful cartel and showed how local police protected the drug mafias.

Zeta co-founder Miranda was murdered while on his way to work in 1988. Two security guards at Tijuana's Caliente racetrack were later convicted of the killings and sentenced to twenty years in prison.

Since Miranda's killing, Zeta has published a full-page ad in every edition asking the guard's employer, racetrack owner Jorge Hank Rhon, why Miranda was killed. Hank Rhon, a frequent target in Miranda's columns and now the city Mayor, has denied any involvement in the killings.

Hank Rhon told Tijuana reporters he would not mourn Blancornelas' death. The City would hold no official ceremony to mark his passing, he said.

In 1994, Zeta's investigation of the assassination of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio in Tijuana arrived at a conclusion almost as controversial as the magazine's expose of the cartels: Despite a swirl of conspiracy rumours surrounding the case, Zeta found that the assassin, troubled factory worked Mario Aburto, had acted alone.

In the late 1990's, cartel hits of police and prosecutors in the city became so common that Zeta would occasionally publish lists of the dead with titles such as " the Organogram of Death".

Undeterred by the killing of more journalists, Blancornelas and Zeta continued to publish stories, including one that detailed links between the Tijuana Cartel and the Mexican Mafia, a California based prison gang.

In November 1997, Blancornelas himself became a victim, when gunmen opened fire on his car in a busy Tijuana street. His bodyguard Luis Valero was killed.

"Thanks to God, my faithful friend Luis Valero, and the marvels of medical science, I am alive", Blancornelas wrote in a column from his hospital bed. Rather than allow the attack to silence him, Blancornelas began a history of the Tijuana cartel that ran in installments.

"Everyone, even the narcotics traffickers, were waiting to see what I would do", Blancornelas told the Times in a 2002 interview. " If I retired, I was afraid the narcotics traffickers would feel free to do the same thing to my colleagues".

In the years that followed, Blancornelas travelled in Tijuana with a security detail worthy of a head of state. Having become a symbol of journalistic tenacity and courage, he received numerous international awards, including Colombia University's Maria Moors Cabot Prize and awards from the Inter American Press Association and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The attacks against Zeta's staff continued. Co-editor Francisco Ortiz Franco was killed in 2004 while driving a car with his two young children.

In April, weakened by illness, Blancornelas retired from the magazine he had founded.

He is survived by his wife, Genoveva Villalon de Blanco, and three sons.

He and a small team of riders will travel across West Texas to Central Texas, making stops in Marfa, Del Rio, and San Antonio before reaching Austin, their final destination. A rally is planned in Austin on November 9th, the day Gutierrez is expected to arrive.