Return “The worst days of the war against Narco” in the north of Mexico: shootings and disappearances sow terror

Until 50 people are missing after starting three-hour car journeys this year between the Mexican industrial city of Monterrey and the city of Nuevo Laredo, on the border with the United States, on a busy stretch of highway that local media have dubbed “the highway of death.”

His relatives claim that they have simply disappeared. Such disappearances, and the shooting last week of 15 apparently innocent passers-by in Reynosa, indicate that Mexico returns to the dark days of the 2006-2012 war on drugs, when the armed men of the cartel attacked ordinary people as well as each other.

“It is no longer between them, the cartels are attacking citizens,” said activist Angélica Orozco.

It is believed that up to half a dozen people missing on the road are citizens or residents of the United States, although the U.S. Embassy in Mexico was unable to confirm its status. One of them, José de Jesús Gómez, a resident of Irving, Texas, reportedly disappeared on that highway on June 3.

Saturday, the FBI office in San Antonio, Texas, issued a bulletin asking for information about the disappearance of Gladys Pérez Sánchez, a woman from Laredo, Texas, her 16-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter, who were last seen on June 13 while taking the highway. They had visited relatives in Sabinas Hidalgo, a town on the freeway, and were returning to Texas when they disappeared.

Most of the victims are said to have disappeared on approaching or leaving Nuevo Laredo, a cartel-dominated town bordering Laredo, Texas.. About half a dozen men reappeared alive, savagely beaten, and all they said was that armed men forced them to stop on the road and took their vehicles away.

What happened to others, including a woman and her two young children, remains a mystery. Most were residents of the state of Nuevo León, where Monterrey is located. Desperate for answers Relatives of the missing took to the streets of Monterrey on Thursday to protest, demanding answers.

Orozco, a member of the United Forces for our Disappeared, said that the kidnappings seem to mark a throwback to the worst days of the drug war in Mexico, as in 2011, when gunmen from a cartel in neighboring Tamaulipas state pulled innocent bus passengers to fight to the death with maces.

Then as today, politicians and prosecutors gave few answers to the families of the missing.

“After the 2010-2011 disappearances, they cannot continue with the same excuses as 10 years ago,” Orozco said. However, he added, “they continue with the same rhetoric.”

“They are supposed to have created institutions, procedures, but history repeats itself that the authorities do nothing “, to complain.

United Forces for our Disappeared issued a press release on May 19 warning about the dangers of the highway between Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo, while by mid-May, the group had received only a dozen missing person reports. Other reports arrived in June and now number about 50.

The state government of Nuevo León admitted 10 days later that he had received reports of 14 people missing on the road so far in 2021as well as five others in the neighboring state of Tamaulipas, where Nuevo Laredo is located.

However, Nuevo León did not warn people traveling on the highway until June 23, almost a month later.

The warning came too late for Gómez and Javier Toto Cagal, a 36-year-old truck driver and father of five who went missing on June 3 with three other employees of the same trucking company on the 220-kilometer (135-mile) stretch. They were going to Nuevo Laredo by car.

“So far they don’t know anything about them … It’s very murky,” said Erma Fiscal Jara, Toto Cagal’s wife. “It was only on June 5 that the company informed me that ‘her husband was missing’. With the authorities, for the moment nothing. I ask and they say ‘we do not know’.

Even after acknowledging the kidnappings, the state government of Nuevo León hinted that it was the problem of neighboring Tamaulipas. Nuevo León’s government also gave confusing information, initially claiming it had saved 17 people after the highway kidnappings., but then recognizing that these people had returned on their own.

It was not until Friday that the two governments announced a joint program to increase vigilance and safety on the road, a measure which, had it been put in place a month earlier, would likely have saved dozens of lives.

“The National Guard will hardly be patrolling the road. I don’t know why they waited so long, ”asked Karla Moreno, whose husband, truck driver Artemio Moreno, disappeared on April 13 on the highway.

She, too, is terrified that northern Mexico will repeat the experiences of ten years ago.

“How can this happen? At the moment, it is assumed that there are more resources (police), ”he commented.

For a long time, Nuevo Laredo was dominated by the Northeast Cartel, a remnant of the old Los Zetas Cartel, whose members were known for their violence.

Alejandro Hope, a security analyst for Mexico, said the highway disappearances and the events of June 19 in Reynosa – when gunmen from rival cartels marched through the streets, randomly killing 15 passers-by – They recall the attacks on civilians during the war on drugs from 2006 to 2012.

* With AP information

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