Maria Jesus Mancha had just come from burying her son.
It took her about 20 minutes to drive to the cemetery from her house in a lower middle-class neighborhood in the Mexican border city of Reynosa. In just half that time she could have driven across the border into Texas.
That's how close the frontlines in Mexico's drug war are to the United States.
Her son Miguel Angel Vazquez, 27, was a computer engineer in a U.S.-owned assembly plant in Reynosa. He was married with two young children.
"I blame the authorities, our bad government and the police. You must realize these people are disguised as police," she said, referring to cartel gunmen as "these people."
A local newspaper El Sol, citing police sources, said only that her son was caught in crossfire when narcos opened fire on a police patrol as he drove home around midnight.
But Mancha dares to contradict the official version. Other residents of Reynosa also believe that some in the police take orders from the now-dominant Gulf Cartel -- but they keep their opinions to themselves.
Asked if she preferred not to be quoted by name, she was defiant and pleaded not to edit her words.
"If they want to kill me for saying this then here I am. They killed me when they killed my son. I'm already dead," Mancha told me.
From Mancha's living room, you could see a large pick-up truck with tinted windows -- like the ones favored by the cartels -- slowly patrolling up and down the street.
There was no way of knowing who was really inside. But that's the problem these days in Reynosa -- people suspect the cartel has eyes and ears everywhere.
Whatever the threat level to civilians, it's easy to become paranoid in Reynosa.
During a five-day stay in Reynosa, pick-up trucks and luxury SUVs shadowed our movements. From time to time one of the trucks would crack open a window, revealing four men inside and the driver holding a walkie-talkie.
On pedestrian streets, we were followed by three young men in shiny, sequined baseball caps -- one of the hallmarks of young cartel lookouts known here as "falcons."
Visiting journalists have the option of leaving. It's a different story for the Mexican journalists.
This year alone at least six journalists from Reynosa and the surrounding area have been "disappeared" by suspected drug cartel gunmen, according to Jaime Aguirre, head of Reynosa's Democratic Union of Journalists.
In a bid to survive, most local journalists seem to have decided self-censorship is the better part of valor. There's little news of the home-grown drug war in the newspapers or on the radio. The information void left by the traditional media is being filled by concerned citizens using web tools like Twitter.
They warn of gangsters setting up roadblocks and of the echo of gunfire. They ask each other for status reports from neighborhoods across Reynosa and outlying border communities.
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2010/06/gulf-cartel-against-los-zetas-in.html#moreWoman Wounded in Attack on Mexican Newspaper
Monterrey – Gunmen opened fire with assault rifles on the offices of a newspaper in the northern Mexican city of Torreon, wounding a receptionist, prosecutors said.
The gunmen fired more than 50 rounds Tuesday at the Noticias del Sol de la Laguna’s main entrance, the Coahuila state Attorney General’s Office said.
One of the newspaper’s receptionists, who is pregnant, was wounded in the arm and head, the AG’s office said.
A journalist at the newspaper received death threats after publishing photographs of decapitated victims of the Los Zetas drug cartel, Reporters Without Borders said last week.
“The Noticias del Sol de la Laguna newspaper immediately decided to stop covering crime after threats were made against one of its reporters, Javier Adame Gomez, on 20 May. The threats followed the publication of reports about an attack in Torreon in which eight people died,†the Paris-based press rights group, known by its French initials RSF, said.
The Coahuila AG’s office confirmed last week that grenades were fired at the El Zocalo newspaper in the border city of Piedras Negras, but no one was wounded in the attack.
Journalists in the border states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon have received death threats since the Gulf cartel went to war in March with Los Zetas, the criminal organization’s former armed wing.
Several reporters covering a killing last Thursday were threatened by gunmen, who pointed their weapons at them and stole cameras and other equipment.
“Now commonplace, these threats against journalists are leading to more and more self-censorship. Whenever an article about the activities of organized crime is published in a regional newspaper, the author is putting his life, and the lives of his family and colleagues, in danger,†RSF said.
A total of 62 journalists, according to RSF, have been murdered since 2000 in Mexico, while 11 others have disappeared since 2003.
Several reporters covering a killing last Thursday were threatened by gunmen, who pointed their weapons at them and stole cameras and other equipment.
“Now commonplace, these threats against journalists are leading to more and more self-censorship. Whenever an article about the activities of organized crime is published in a regional newspaper, the author is putting his life, and the lives of his family and colleagues, in danger,†RSF said.
A total of 62 journalists, according to RSF, have been murdered since 2000 in Mexico, while 11 others have disappeared since 2003.
