Pubdate: Sat, 24 Feb 2007
Source: Miami Herald (FL)
Copyright: 2007 The Miami Herald
Contact:  http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/262
Author: Alfredo Corchado, The Dallas Morning News
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/mexico

CARTELS GRIP A BORDER CITY

Nuevo Laredo Has Been Handcuffed By Drug Traffickers, Who Engage In
Violence, Threats And Kidnappings

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - The evening calm here is deceiving.
As dusk settles, folks gather and mill around the town square, as they
do in town squares throughout Mexico. But soon the talk turns to the
latest deadly incident, this week's ambush of a federal congressman,
which left him seriously injured and his 31-year-old driver dead. And
the inevitable question arises: Is it too late to save Nuevo Laredo?

''You look around here and nothing seems real anymore,'' said Mari
Moreno, whose sons live in Texas. ``You do your best to get through
the day, but you know this city will never be normal again.''

More than three years after warring drug cartels launched a battle for
Nuevo Laredo and its smuggling routes into Texas, senior U.S. law-
enforcement officials say the Gulf cartel and its enforcers, the
Zetas, have established significant control over the beleaguered city.

Business Dislocations

In the past year, 700 small- and medium-size businesses shut down in
Nuevo Laredo, and about 40 of the city's top business leaders have set
up shop across the border in Laredo, Texas, according to the Mexican
city's Downtown Merchant and Business Association, headed by Jacobo
Suneson, owner of Marti's, a legendary shopping place.

Nuevo Laredo is a city under siege, with no police chief 11 months
after the last one quit, citing stress. His predecessor had been
gunned down within hours of taking the job.

The drug traffickers have threatened local reporters, warning them
away from coverage of their activities. They have broken cameras being
used to shoot video at crime scenes.

Some residents have begun to use walkie-talkies rather than cellphones
in an attempt to avoid the heavy surveillance that law-enforcement
officials say the cartel places on routine movements and
communication.

U.S. officials say there is evidence that the Zetas are steadily
pushing their influence westward toward Monterrey, a center of Mexican
industry, cementing their network of human intelligence in the border
states of Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. Those states are gateways for
smuggling drugs into Texas and on to cities such as Chicago, New York
and Miami.

To finance their criminal activities, the traffickers are kidnapping
both Mexicans and Americans in rising numbers, a U.S. official said,
and have earned themselves a new nickname: narco secuestradores, or
narco kidnappers.

''They operate on fear,'' said a U.S. law-enforcement official,
speaking on the condition of anonymity, adding that the Gulf cartel
has gained the upper hand in the region over the competing Sinaloa
cartel, led by Joaquin ''El Chapo'' Guzman.

''They're simply more disciplined, have better intelligence, better
training, and proven to be far more effective at recruiting than
Chapo's army,'' the official said.

Growth Of Cartels

A congressional report issued this year by the subcommittee on
investigations of the Committee on Homeland Security said that ``the
Texas-Mexico border has been experiencing an alarming rise in the
level of criminal cartel activity.''

The report added that ``these criminal organizations and networks are
highly sophisticated and organized, operating with military style
weapons and technology, utilizing counter surveillance techniques and
acting aggressively against both law enforcement and
competitors.''

On Sunday, under the orders of President Felipe Calderon, an estimated
3,300 troops were deployed to the two states to restore order.

Calderon, who came into office Dec. 1, quickly sent a strong signal
when he deployed troops to his home state of Michoacan and to Tijuana
to fight drug traffickers. In all, federal troops and police have now
been sent to eight of the country's 31 states.

The task remains daunting. This week, an assistant state prosecutor
for the state of Durango, Hugo Resendiz Martinez, was fired for
allegedly passing sensitive criminal information to the Sinaloa
cartel. He has been detained and is also under investigation in
connection with killings, the attorney general's office said.

Hours after the troops arrived in Nuevo Laredo, Horacio Garza, a
federal congressman and two-time mayor of the city, was shot as he and
his driver headed toward the airport Monday evening. The driver was
killed. Garza received bullet wounds to the neck, shoulder and leg.

No clear motive for the attack has been established, but over the
weekend, Garza met with families whose relatives have disappeared in
recent years from both sides of the border. Garza vowed to take the
crime files of those who have disappeared and prepare a report for
Calderon and press him for action on behalf of the victims' families.

In 3 1/2 years of intense cartel violence, more than 600 people
reportedly have been killed in Nuevo Laredo.

Hundreds of Mexicans have been kidnapped or have disappeared from the
area in recent years. At least 63 Americans have been kidnapped,
according to Laredo's Missing, an organization set up by family
members to pressure authorities on both sides of the border to find
their loved ones. Many of the Americans were later released, but at
least 20 remain missing.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin