One dirt road leads in and out of Las Chepas, a tiny village south of the border in Mexico where authorities bulldozed 31 buildings in September 2005 in hopes of eliminating hideout spots for illegal entrants preparing to cross into the U.S.

Heavy rains can wreak havoc on the 18-mile stretch from Las Palomas (the Mexican sister city to Columbus, New Mexico). This week’s heavy rains left one section of the road a muddy, inpassable mess on Sunday morning.

Have no fear, though; the local road repair team arrived in the morning to get to work. The team members don’t wear uniforms or use fancy equipment or machinery. They don’t get paid either, let alone overtime for a Sunday. They are all residents of Las Chepas and Las Palomas who know nobody else would fix the road if they didn’t.

Men from the border village of Las Chepas, Chihuahua, Mexico, just a few yards south of the U.S./Mexico border, toss rocks from the back of the town’s sheriff’s flatbed truck, Sunday, July 30, 2006, to fill in a washed out portion of the only road into and out of the tiny town. There is no heavy machinery or city employees to do the work so the townspeople have to do the job. Photo by Kelly Presnell.

They came in their personal trucks wearing jeans, rubber boots and cowboy hats. Their tools consisted of shovels, rocks and a willingness to get wet and muddy. We came upon the informal crew midway through their work late Sunday morning on our way to Las Chepas. With the railroad tie vehicle barriers that mark the U.S.-Mexico border as a backdrop, the men shoveled dirt to make a makeshift levy to divert the water and tossed thousands of rocks on top of the mud in hopes of establishing a surface that would help the trucks avoid sinking into the deep mud.

The first brave soul to attempt the passage went for it in a small Ford Ranger truck. He didn’t make it. Not even close. He gunned it forward and backward, tried easing into it and even had some of the men bounce up and down on his back bumper. Nothing worked. The local residents watching had mud splattered all over their clothes and faces as evidence of the failed attempt.

Lucky for him, another man in a larger, albeit old truck, had a chain. He tugged his stuck countryman back out just enough for the truck to gain the inertia needed to churn through it and to the other side, where dry road escorted him the final couple of miles to Las Chepas. After that, the bigger truck gunned through. Next, came a truck with 10 young men from Las Palomas who said they worked in one of the ranches in Las Chepas. They too made it through.

We muddied through as well and arrived to our destination; Las Chepas, which we’ll tell you more about in the stories we write following this trip. On the way back, with storm clouds hovering in the west, we found a new group of men on the back of a flatbed truck throwing more rocks on the muddy passage for safe measure. By that afternoon, trucks drove past without even hesitating.

The method might not have been the most beautiful or efficient but it achieved its purpose: the Las Chepas-Las Palomas camino was reopened.

Until the next rain comes, at least.