On the ghetto-ass streets of Laredo....
Jordan, remind me again, why is it that should I want to go
So January of this year I stumble upon an article about Laredo on the front page of the NY Times. Then BBC did a report on my home town as well. This week I hear our mayor was on Lou Dobbs Tonight. THEN I find this article in today's issue of the NY Times.
All about the escalating drug/gang-related violence in Laredo & Neuvo Laredo.
June 28, 2005 Mexican Forces Rescue Dozens Apparently Held by Kidnappers
By GINGER THOMPSON
MEXICO CITY, June 27 - Hundreds of federal agents sent to bring order to the crime-plagued Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo have rescued 43 people who appeared to have been kidnapped and held in two houses in a poor neighborhood of the city, the Mexican authorities said Monday.
The rescues of 37 men and 6 women were made Sunday night, they said, when at least 200 federal police officers and soldiers conducted raids on three houses in a notorious neighborhood of government-financed housing. They were met with grenade and automatic fire by at least three men identified as kidnappers, who were taken into custody.
The authorities said agents had found 10 people they believed were held prisoner in one house and 33 in another. Some of them were bound and gagged with duct tape, at least two were naked, and one showed signs of having been tortured.
Some of the people in the houses told the authorities that they had been held for as long as three months.
The federal authorities provided names and ages of those found but would not would not give additional information, saying some could be members of rival drug gangs or kidnappers hiding among the victims. At least three were minors.
Rene Salinas, an F.B.I. agent monitoring the situation from the American side of the border, said: "We still do not know who these people are. But it was clear that some of them were being held against their will."
A wave of drug-related crime has pushed Nuevo Laredo close to anarchy. The city of 300,000 people across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Tex., has been overwhelmed by clashes among rival drug organizations fighting for control of the lucrative drug routes through this region.
Human rights investigators said about 65 people, including the city's last two police chiefs, have been killed in drug-related violence this year. United States diplomats had reported that more than 30 Americans had been killed or kidnapped in the city in the last nine months.
Relatives of the missing Americans gathered after midnight Sunday at a Denny's Restaurant in Laredo and waited past 3 a.m. Monday before finding out that their loved ones were not among those rescued. William Slemaker, whose 27-year-old daughter, Yvette Martinez, has been missing for 10 months, said, though, that the raids had given him his first hope that the authorities might eventually find her.
"I am actually not disappointed at all," he said in a telephone interview. "I've always said that there are hundreds of Mexicans missing over there, and that if the authorities look for their people, they will find ours too."
More than 100 people stood vigil outside a military installation in Nuevo Laredo, waiting for word about whether their missing relatives were among those rescued. A list released late Monday afternoon brought tears of joy to some and despair to others.
Two weeks ago, President Vicente Fox sent 1,000 troops and federal agents to eight cities along the border to crack down on fighting among rival drug organizations and restore order. The largest contingent was sent to Nuevo Laredo, where the violence has escalated the fastest and where the authorities believe the municipal police have served as lookouts and hit men for the drug gangs.
At the start of the special federal operation, the mayor of Nuevo Laredo suspended the entire municipal police force of about 730 officers pending drug and polygraph tests. So far, about 100 have been fired.
But the killings continue. On Monday, the violent death toll in Nuevo Laredo rose by three, including a 15-year-old boy.
The raids on Sunday uncovered more evidence of trouble in Nuevo Laredo's police force. In a news conference on Monday, Ministry of Public Security officials said some of those rescued had reported that they had been kidnapped by the municipal police and turned over to a feared group of gunmen, called the Zetas. The group, organized and trained by former special forces officers, work as the enforcement arm of the powerful Gulf Cartel, which is struggling to fend off challenges by rival drug groups, led by Joaquín (El Chapo) Guzmán.
"The insecurity is the result of a series of factors, among them are levels of impunity that have weakened local police," said Gilberto Higuera Bernal, a federal prosecutor. "There must be conditions created so that state and local police take charge of public security."
James C. McKinley Jr. contributed reporting for this article.
My mom was definitely right when she said I'd be safer in Istanbul.