For months, activists have spent their days and nights camped in the Texas desert, keeping careful watch on construction of the Trans-Pecos pipeline, a 148-mile project designed to move natural gas across the border to Mexico. Inspired by the protests of the Dakota Access pipeline, they hoped to attract national attention and kill the project.
But recently they’ve been getting the wrong kind of press. A new report from the Houston Chronicle reveals that protest leader Rabago Gutierrez, 56, was violating his parole for charges that included assault with a deadly weapon, rape and sex with a minor.
Further investigation by the Washington Examiner shows that Gutierrez welcomed children into the camp before being arrested for violating his parole.
In a video posted to Facebook on Feb. 11, Gutierrez welcomes more than two dozen minors into the Two Rivers Camp in the desert just outside Marfa, Texas. “We had 25 high school students from Colorado come to camp,” he narrates in the video, “to learn more about the camp, and what is happening with the Pipeline. Great weekend.”
Gutierrez, who was responsible for the camp’s security, said the students traveled all the way from Boulder, Colorado. A long trek, that road trip takes at least 13 hours according to Google Maps and would’ve required an overnight stop.
Inspired by their dedication, Gutierrez described the young protestors as “a bunch of good looking kids.” Other photos posted on Facebook show elementary aged children in the camp as well.
While leading the protest, he went under the alias of Pete Hefflin and activists were apparently unaware of his past. After his arrest, some were more concerned than others. “We’ve always been about holding people accountable,” said Frankie Orona, executive director of the Society of Native Nations, on whose board Hefflin served, “and in this situation, he was definitely wrong. I am upset with him.”
Lori Glover, co-founder of the anti-pipeline group Defend Big Bend and owner of the campground, told the Houston Chronicle that Gutierrez had already served his sentence in a cruel penal justice system.
“He served his time, made a new start,” she told the Chronicle. “I was unaware of any of this past history. Despite that, I feel very privileged to have worked with Pete Hefflin.”
Gutierrez’s rap sheet reads like a description of a villain in an old Western. He spent six years in prison for a rape he committed in 1984, the Chronicle reports, and he went back to prison for four years in 1998 after he was convicted of having sex with a minor. For breaking his parole in 2007, Gutierrez became a wanted man, according to the Chronicle.
While on the run, the California Department of Justice described him as “moderate-high risk.”
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
