By Tim Steller
The Arizona Daily Star

El Guasiado walks into the prison office shirtless, with his chin jutting out.

His name is Hugo Chavez Alvarado, but like anyone who wants to be someone in the border's criminal underworld, Chavez has taken on a nickname. Here in prison, even the warden uses it.

Translated loosely, it means ``The Lunatic.''

A group of boys from Agua Prieta pointed to El Guasiado (pronounced wa-see-ODD-o) as their leader in a criminal enterprise: robbing border crossers. The boys, 12 to 15, told police that El Guasiado and his partner, El Quemado (``The Hoodlum''), organized them, gave them handguns and divided up the proceeds when they were done robbing.

El Quemado, Octavio Rojas Yañez, is also accused of murdering a guide who wouldn't let him rape a female border crosser.

Short-haired and muscular, El Guasiado, 27, denies any involvement in robberies, rapes or murders, but freely admits he used to work as a guide for illegal entrants. So does Rojas.

Taking two groups of migrants across the border per week, he could make around $800 per week, El Guasiado says.

``See, just for guiding them . . . they pay you 30 to 50 dollars for every one,'' he says.

Guiding near Douglas, he would drive a group west to an area about 3 1/2 miles south of the border, then take them across.

El Guasiado tried to steer clear of ranch houses ``because of the danger, because of that worry the ranchers will shoot.''

The group would walk to a prearranged place along Arizona 80, where a car would be waiting on the roadside.

The group would board, then drive north on Arizona 191 to Interstate 10 - ``el free'' as Guasiado calls it. He wouldn't drive, though; he would make the migrants do it in case the car was stopped by the Border Patrol.

``They didn't catch me,'' he says.