Houston Chronicle – The choice facing Drug Enforcement Administration agent Joe Dubois and FBI agent Daniel Fuentes was simple: Hold their ground to be riddled with machine-gun fire, or be captured by drug-cartel henchmen who would diabolically interrogate them using pliers, blowtorches or worse.

DEA agent Joe Dubois, in an exclusive interview with the Houston Chronicle, finally shares his story of a hostile showdown with Mexican drug kingpin Osiel Cardenas in 1999. While gathering intelligence just across the border, Dubois and FBI agent Daniel Fuentes refused to surrender after their car was surrounded by three vehicles and a dozen or so gunman with assault rifles. Cardenas himself pounded on the glass of the car and demanded surrender. He even smiled at the FBI badges, and raised an AK-47 to the window. But Dubois stood firm, teaching us a few lessons that transcend the War on Drugs.

Dubois and his partners refused to surrender, not as much because of protocol, but because of history. In 1985 a fellow DEA agent of Dubois’s was kidnapped and tortured under similar circumstances. After the incident, the U.S. launched a massive manhunt for the killers and accomplices. The aggressive response by the U.S. must have made a lasting impression on Cardenas. When he challenged the agents’ authority, they responded by saying, “You are fixing to make 300,000 enemies.” Cardenas then called off the gunmen and told the agents to get the hell out of his town.

This story brings to light the type of drama that happens every day just over the border. Mexico and other Latin American countries promise to cooperate with the DEA, Department of Justice, and Homeland Security, but rarely have the aggressive resolve that is necessary to reel in multi-millionaire drug lords. The fact alone that the convoy that surrounded Dubois and Fuentes included assailants in state police uniforms leads me to believe that the Mexican government is not doing enough.

More indistinctly, the showdown between Dubois and Cardenas is a good example of how much of a headache we still are for the bad guys in less developed countries. Whether it is drug pins in Mexico or rogue tribal leaders in Pakistan, these guys are willing to curb their delinquent behavior just so we leave them alone for a while. It is an intended but less recognizable consequence of U.S. foreign policy over the last 60 years. I am not suggesting that Afghanistan and Iraq have been successful endeavors. Obviously the United States cannot haphazardly cross borders with disregard for sovereignty, hunting down any entity we find threatening. But we have proven that we will, and maybe it is good that we continue to act like it.

Possibly the greatest lesson to this amazing story is to never surrender. You see it on the news, playing out in the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. You even see it in the movies. The protagonist who gives in to the villain never comes out the hero, but more a victim to unimaginable abomination. Hopefully, law enforcement agents, soldiers, and teenagers by the lake in horror flicks are as focused as was Joe Dubois. Remember, as Dubois puts it, you “would rather 15 guys riddle you full of bullet holes” than “take a blow torch to you.”

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