DON HENRY FORD JR.

G 3
Stories About People
February 24, 2013
Don Henry Ford Jr.
DRUGS, WOMEN, MEXICO.
Tales of a
drug smuggling
cowboy.
“This business kills just
about everyone in it. But it
doesn’t kill the business.”

Since retired, Don
Henry Ford Jr. was
once a drug smuggler at
the Texas-Mexico border.

Tales of a
Drug Smuggling
Cowboy
How the son of a farmer
found himself in the middle of the
Mexican drug trade-and how he got out.
Story Patrick Beach
These days there’s a barbecue joint near
the intersection of two rural roads between
Seguin and Gonzales where, the
story goes, highwaymen used to lie in wait
for travelers to rob. “Now,” Don Henry Ford Jr.,
says with a dusty chuckle, “it’s the highway patrol.”
With all due respect to Texas’ law enforcement
community, Ford sees the roles of cops and
robbers as much more nuanced than white hats
and black hats. Moral absolutes are at times hard
to come by in the real, complicated world. Temptation
is a chronic tap on the shoulder, good guys
can get compromised and outlaws have at least
the potential for noble and generous acts. Whether
it’s yesterday’s highwaymen or today’s speed-

Ford currently tends to horses at his father’s horse sales barn. The allure of the drug trade will always be there, but he says he is never going back.
Ford is 48 years old. With
his hat and Wranglers and
sun-cured neck, he looks
like a cowboy, which he
is. He does not look like a former
dope smuggler who says he
did business with Amado
Carrillo Fuentes -- the biggest
drug lord in the world
until his death on a plastic-surgery
table in Mexico
in 1997 -- and tells tales
of trading shots with notorious
narcotrafficker Pablo Acosta’s men.
Tens of millions of dollars and tons
of marijuana passed through Ford’s
hands. He says he extravagantly entertained
prostitutes, once gave a
pretty girl $3,000 in cash for looking
at him in just the right way, broke
Not one single person
quit smoking pot
because I went to prison.
The sometimes-bronc rider grew
up mostly in West Texas and
spent much of the ‘80s riding
an even wilder and more deadly
beast, a worldwide drug economy
estimated these days at close
to half a trillion dollars every year.
“This business kills just about
everybody in it,” he says, sitting
in his family’s 600-acre spread
near Belmont and that infamous
highway intersection, where he
runs cattle and raises hay. “But
it doesn’t kill the business.”
And that, Ford says, is the bitter
and unlearned lesson in the
two-decade war on drugs. He sees
that continuing war as a farce, a
squandering of tax dollars
and human lives. That, Ford
says, is why he’s speaking out
about his experiences. That,
Ford says, is why he wrote
“Contrabando: Confessions
of a Drug-Smuggling
Texas Cowboy,” published
by El Paso’s Cinco Puntos Press.
The book is an unflinching document
of high times and high terror
in the dope trade, of getting
caught just after Congress passed
the Comprehensive Crime Control
Act of 1984 -- the opening

Don Ford now spends his time
behind a desk,from which he can see
the New Mexico Police Department; a
constant reminder of why he left the trade.

Cover Justification
I chose this cover photo because it had enough space to work with while also showing the subject of the
story. I struggled with finding a logo design, but settled on using red to give it some distinction. I tried
matching the color of his shirt in the logo but the color was too soft to be used in a logo. I boxed the
logo in order to differentiate the logo from the rest of the page. I decided to not put any color into the
box because the sky was a good color that set off the red well. I used sanserif fonts throughout the cover
because I wanted to focus on using bolds and italics to create variety instead of using fonts. I justified the
sentence “Tales of a Drug Smuggling Cowboy” to his body because I wanted to keep the Z read going.
If it had not been justified toward him I think that the eye would have been led off the page instead of
down to the quote. I used white for the quote at the bottom of the page because black did not provide
enough contrast. I made sure to not make the font size too big because that would have made the quote
too dominant on the page. I also chose white because it balances the barcode and also matches the date
at the top of the cover. I used red to high light the most interesting thing about the story and I chose red
because it matched the logo, creating a bit more balance throughout the cover. I thought about making
the photo bigger but decided to keep him further away from the camera because he is looking off into the
distance. It would have been odd for him to be looking off into the distance without any distance for him
to be looking at.

Page 1-2
I chose to use this picture because it was very similar to the cover photo, except he is looking directly into the camera
instead. I think that this makes him more personable and also gives him an identity instead of just being a cowboy
looking off into the distance. Unfortunately the photo was blurred by how close I had to make it, but it would
not fit the page correctly otherwise. I took up a third of the other page with this image because I wanted to avoid
putting too much type in the introduction stages of the story. I matched the title to the color of his shirt to provide
balance to the page, as his blue shirt is the most dominant color in the picture. I chose serif font for the body of the
story because it is easier to read than san serif fonts.
Page 3-4
I chose to continue with the theme of his blue shirt since it shows up in all of the photos he is in. The smaller photo
at the top did not need to be emphasized because it is an action shot of him, and it seems that he is not even the
focus of the photo as much as the horse is. This balances well with the photo on the opposite page, where he is again
looking directly into the camera. It would be weird for him to be looking directly at the reader on two pages in a
row. I chose to full bleed the photo on the right because it is a powerful image that did not look right as a smaller
version. I put the caption inside of the photo because there was plenty of space to put it in without making it diffi-