Mexican drug war brings murders and kidnappings to border town

David Adams:

Celebrating her 23rd birthday, Brenda Cisneros and a friend drove across the border to a concert in Nuevo Laredo one night last August. They never came home.

"It's been seven months of agony," said Brenda's mother, Priscilla Cisneros, tears welling up as she unrolls a poster of her missing daughter.

"The Mexican authorities say they are investigating, but nothing happens. And the American authorities tell us there's not much they can do."

Dozens of Laredo parents say their children have been abducted in Mexico lately. Some of the kidnappings have been attributed to a turf war between drug cartels competing for control of this stretch of the border, a key corridor for Texas-bound cocaine, marijuana and heroin.

Dozens have died in Nuevo Laredo, from gunfights with local police to execution-style slayings of attorneys and journalists in broad daylight.

The violence had been contained to Mexico, but the drug war increasingly is creeping across the border. The abductions are straining relations between the twin cities of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, long known affectionately as "los dos Laredos."

Late last month, the State Department issued an unusually blunt travel advisory confirming that more than 30 Americans have been kidnapped or murdered in the past eight months in Nuevo Laredo. "U.S. citizens are urged to be especially aware of safety and security concerns when visiting the border region," it stated. "While the overwhelming majority of victims of these crimes are Mexican citizens, U.S. citizens nonetheless should be aware of the risk posed by this uncertain security situation."

Here is what might have happened to the girls:

Mexico's famously lax drinking laws lure American teenagers to the bars and clubs.

It was into that scene that Brenda Cisneros and 27-year-old Yvette Martinez ventured. They had tickets to a concert featuring a popular ranchero singer, Pepe Aguilar, a surprise treat Martinez arranged for her friend.

The families and police suspect the women ran into a bad crowd, probably linked to local traffickers.

"We heard later that a bunch of 70 armed men dressed in black uniforms turned up at the concert," said William Slemaker, Martinez's stepfather.

Slemaker, a railroad worker who speaks fluent Spanish, filed a missing persons report with police in Nuevo Laredo. Pablo Cisneros, a U.S. citizen who was raised in Nuevo Laredo, went with him.

Unsatisfied with the cooperation of Mexican police, the two fathers began their own investigation. Said Slemaker: "Every day I would go to Nuevo Laredo and cruise up and down the streets hoping to see her car," a pearl-white Mitsubishi.

He received a tip in October from police in Laredo to check out a towing company that worked with the Nuevo Laredo police department. Sure enough, a few days later he found the Mitsubishi tucked away in the back of a yonke (junkyard).

Towing company records showed that the car had been picked up from the police a month after the women vanished. A form bore the signature of the duty police officer. But when Slemaker checked the police logs, he found no mention of the vehicle.

Nuevo Laredo's director of Public Security, Jose Valdez, declined to discuss the case of the missing Americans. "That's out of our hands. It's being investigated by federal authorities," he said.

But Slemaker and Cisneros are convinced of a police coverup. "Basically, it's a crime for beautiful young women to be walking the streets of Nuevo Laredo," said Slemaker.

Mexico's drug wars had mostly left the Laredos untouched. After Vicente Fox was elected president in 2000, Mexico improved coordination with U.S. drug agents and cracked down on the major cartels. That success fragmented them into smaller cartelitos.

"Fox's government has had major success in going after high-level trafficking," said Bruce Bagley, a drug policy expert at the University of Miami. "But the move from cartels to cartelitos has produced a free-wheeling warfare for turf and routes in which people are being killed on all sides. It's happening all over the country, and the border is the choke point."

Adding fuel to the fire, one of the trafficking groups was reinforced by the desertion of 31 elite Mexican special forces, known as the Zetas, who brought a new level of firepower to the drug war.

"These people are commandos," said Arturo Fontes, a special agent for the FBI in Laredo. "They are trained to be instructors and force multipliers. They know how to handle weapons and have a much more specialized expertise in trafficking operations."

Nuevo Laredo found itself caught in the middle.

More than 100 people have died in drug-related violence in the past year, 40 since January, and officials say the numbers could be double that.

April saw 11 murders, assassination attempts and a shootout with police on the international bridge. On April 10, traffickers armed with assault rifles and a rocket-propelled grenade ambushed a police convoy barely 10 blocks from city hall. Four policemen and a passer-by were wounded. Investigators found more than 300 shell casings at the scene.

Last month's travel warning bluntly questioned the ability of Mexican police to deal with the crime wave:

"Mexico's police forces suffer from lack of funds and training, and the judicial system is weak, overworked and inefficient." It added: "Criminals, armed with an impressive array of weapons, know there is little chance they will be caught and punished."

Last year, the news editor of El Manana, the city's main daily paper, was stabbed outside his home. Roberto Mora was well known for writing stinging criticism of local government corruption. One of the men suspected in his killing was murdered in jail after saying he had been tortured into signing a confession.

"Nothing like that ever happened before here. It changed all our lives," said Ramon Cantu, El Manana 's publisher. "Now we are censoring ourselves. We don't investigate. We don't speculate. We just report what happened."

More brazen was the recent murder of Guadalupe Garcia, a police reporter for the main Nuevo Laredo radio station, Stereo 91. She was gunned down outside the station's office in the city center.

A security camera captured images of a lone gunman lying in wait outside the station when she drove up. She had just filed a report on the assassination of a prominent attorney.

Garcia's crime reporting won her high ratings and numerous death threats. Reporters say intimidation is common; several described a favored tactic of traffickers, who pick up reporters for a ride around town with a pistol in their ribs.

"It's like the Italian Mafia," said the FBI's Fontes. "They are victimizing an entire community."

City Hall downplays the violence.

"The media are being very alarmist," said the mayor's spokesman, Ramberto Salinas, 35, clutching the morning newspaper, with gruesome front page pictures of a bloody, bullet-riddled body in a bar. "They are doing the city a disservice. Sure, there's a drug war. But it's between traffickers. The tourists go home safe and sound."

Salinas and other city officials suggested most of the victims had only themselves to blame. They like to quote a saying oft heard in Nuevo Laredo, "Quien anda mal, termina mal," which translates roughly as: Bad things happen to people who deserve it.

So basically if you are a victim of a crime in the town it is your own fault.