Mexican City Pays the Price as Drug Gangs Fight for Territory

His predecessor was gunned down on his first day on the job. He has three young children and a pregnant wife. But Omar Pimentel on Wednesday pledged to help end a spate of drug-related violence by becoming the police chief of this bloodied border town.

After his swearing-in, the 37-year-old Pimentel said he didn’t want to dwell on the fate of Alejandro Dominguez Coello, who was assassinated in early June just hours after he took the same oath. But it’s clearly on the mind of his employer. The city has assigned four bodyguards to protect its new top cop.

This sweltering city just across the river from Laredo, Texas, is at the center of a heated battle between rival drug gangs vying to control smuggling routes into the United States. More than 80 people have been killed in Nuevo Laredo this year, more than in all of 2004. Many of those corpses have shown signs of mutilation, torture or execution-style slaying, the calling cards of organized crime.

In the wake of the brazen hit on Dominguez, the federal government suspended all members of Nuevo Laredo’s police force, some of whom are believed to be working for drug traffickers. More than 10% of the city’s 700 cops have already been fired for failing drug tests and background checks, and more dismissals are on the way.

In the meantime, army units, state police and agents from Mexico’s version of the FBI have taken over security in Nuevo Laredo, setting up checkpoints and patrols in a mission dubbed Operation Safe Mexico. But the mayhem continues on their watch.

Gunmen recently blasted their way into a hotel with grenades and automatic weapons, kidnapping three men who have yet to be found. A 22-year-old man was shot to death in broad daylight near City Hall in front of his mother and his young child.

“It’s beyond anything we’ve known,” said Basilio Ramos Zapata, a member of a citizens group that canceled a peace march last month over fears of violence.

Nuevo Laredo residents are a stalwart lot. The city was settled by proud Mexicans who moved south of the Rio Grande rather than remain on U.S. soil after Mexico’s defeat in the Mexican-American War in 1848. The population is officially listed at 315,000, but the constant ebb and flow across the border makes counting tricky. Locals guess that at least half a million people live in this flat, dusty expanse enveloped by searing blue skies.

People here have adapted to other extremes that accompany life on the edge of the United States. Although international trade and maquiladora export factories form the core of Nuevo Laredo’s economy, the U.S. appetite for sex and drugs long has fed a rougher fringe. Prostitution is legal in the “zona de tolerancia” known as Boys Town. Narcotics traffickers eager to be close to their prime export market have long operated in the region.

So although the latest headlines have spooked tourists and some wealthier residents have fled, most in Nuevo Laredo have gone quietly about their business.

On a recent afternoon, old men lounged in the shade while young mothers trailed their scampering children through the city’s charming public squares. Shoppers admired the cowboy boots that fill the displays of downtown shoe stores. Horses pulling carriages clip-clopped languidly. A trio of country singers serenaded the lunchtime crowd bellying up to a sidewalk taco stand. Not exactly the images of a city under siege.

“People have this impression that there are bullets flying everywhere, but it’s just not so,” said Paola Grammer de Riojas, a jewelry vendor who said her sales were off 80% because U.S. tourists had stopped coming. “There have been a lot of false rumors and exaggeration.”

Yet there is a nagging unease among even the most resolute Nuevo Laredo boosters that something fundamental has changed. Locals say traffickers historically settled beefs among themselves and rarely preyed on civilians or officials. The rising body count and expressly public executions of high-profile figures such as Dominguez signal a new era in which anyone is fair game.

“The idea is to create fear and generate fear,” said Jorge Chabat, a Mexico City political scientist and organized crime expert.

It’s working. Authorities say that criminal gangs have found a profitable sideline in kidnapping and extortion. Most families and businesses simply pay up if they can, fearful of contacting police who may be in league with the criminals. Now the traffickers are snatching one another. In late June, federal agents and soldiers rescued 44 kidnapping victims from three houses in Nuevo Laredo, many of whom are believed to be involved in the drug trade.

A series of home invasion attacks has spawned an exodus from portions of the city’s exclusive Colonia Madero neighborhood. Weeds, graffiti and “for sale” signs have sprouted on the perimeters of vacant mansions, where well-heeled residents are moving out and gangsters are said to be moving in.

Reporters are looking over their shoulders as well. Since 2000, seven journalists have been killed in Tamaulipas state, where Nuevo Laredo is located, making it the most dangerous region in Mexico for the media. The most recent fatality was radio crime reporter Dolores Guadalupe Garcia Escamilla, who was shot multiple times outside her Nuevo Laredo office in April.

With their employees in danger, some media outlets have stopped digging deeply into sensitive issues, or have refrained from even mentioning the names of suspected traffickers and drug cartels. “It’s frustrating and it’s sad because we have an obligation to help make things better,” said Marco Guillermo Villarreal Marroquin, director of the Nuevo Laredo daily newspaper El Diario.

Crime experts say Nuevo Laredo’s troubles stem from the 2003 arrest of Osiel Cardenas, the alleged leader of the Tamaulipas-based Gulf cartel, who is in prison awaiting trial. His rivals in other regions of Mexico formed an alliance to move in on his turf.

Led by Sinaloa-based kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the interlopers have gone to war with the military arm of the Gulf cartel, part of a nationwide explosion of drug violence that has killed more than 600 people from Tijuana to Cancun this year.

Nuevo Laredo is a key battleground because of the four international bridges over the Rio Grande connecting it with Laredo. The area is the largest cargo crossing point along the U.S.-Mexico border, moving more than 40% of total trade between the two nations. Nearly 1.5 million trucks crossed north into Texas last year, making the area a thriving hub for legal and illicit goods alike.

Although trade and manufacturing remain solid, tourism has wilted like a freshly ironed shirt in the 110-degree summer heat.

In a typical year, tens of thousands of Americans cross the border to Nuevo Laredo, attracted by inexpensive medicines, fine handicrafts, pretty plazas, stirring bullfights and tasty charbroiled goat, not to mention the lower drinking age and other adult diversions. But two State Department warnings and a rash of disappearances of U.S. citizens in Nuevo Laredo have dampened enthusiasm.

Since August 2004, 19 Americans have been kidnapped in Nuevo Laredo and subsequently released, 19 are missing, and four have been found dead, according to U.S. government figures.

Officials say visits are down by about 21% through the end of May compared with the first five months of last year. But many tourist-oriented businesses say their sales are off by much more than that.

At Boys Town, a walled compound dotted with prostitutes’ quarters and cantinas with names like Bar Bum Bum, sex workers say business has plummeted now that the Americans are staying home. Viki, a 26-year-old transvestite in tight jeans and a striped T-shirt, said that his daily client count had dropped by about two-thirds and that he has had to cut his fees nearly in half to attract locals.

“When you don’t have bread, you settle for tortillas,” he said, a hint of stubble showing above his perfect coral lipstick.

Mainstream businesses are hurting as well. The historic Mercado Maclovio Herrera, whose vendors sell everything from hand-woven rugs to plastic Frida Kahlo tote bags, was nearly empty on a recent morning.

Among the handful of shoppers was Jim Daniel, a retired Texas schoolteacher who had brought his wife and a couple of European friends.

An 80-year-old with an iron handshake, Daniel said he had no fear “because I’m not involved in drugs.” In fact, he said he found Nuevo Laredo much improved since he had last visited several years ago.

“It’s cleaner, nicer and the people are just as friendly as they ever were,” Daniel said. “But the crowds are gone. Where are all the shoppers?”

Down the street at Marti’s, an elegant store nicknamed the “Neiman Marcus of Mexico,” owner Pablo Jacobo “Jack” Suneson fretted about the same thing. An amiable bear of a guy who rides a Harley-Davidson, the veteran businessman has steered his way through a number of economic crises. But he said this was by far the roughest stretch he had seen.

On a recent afternoon, shop attendants waited expectantly among the fine jewelry, handbags and buttery soft deerskin jackets for customers who never materialized. Suneson has turned off the lights and air-conditioning on the top level of his store to save money. He can’t remember the last time he bought new inventory. Meanwhile, the bills keep coming.

“I’ve got $1,000 a day in overhead, and I can tell you I’m not even coming close to covering it,” he said.

Like many in Nuevo Laredo, Suneson is exasperated by leaders on both sides of the border. He said that the Mexican government waited too long to send help and that Operation Safe Mexico would be effective only if federal agents and troops dug in for the long haul.

He is also tired of hearing U.S. officials carp that Mexican corruption is the biggest impediment to winning the war on drugs when it is the insatiable demand from American consumers that is driving the whole trade.

He noted that U.S. newspapers write extensively about Mexican drug lords but shed little light on who is moving the stuff once it hits American soil.

“We don’t make the drugs here [in Nuevo Laredo]. We don’t buy the drugs here. But we’re the ones paying the price,” Suneson said.

He and others talk longingly of a hard-nosed government lawyer named Salvador del Toro Rosales, who was sent to Nuevo Laredo in the 1970s when another violent drug war erupted.

Nicknamed the “Iron Prosecutor,” Del Toro became a legend here for doggedly pursuing traffickers and putting them behind bars. Stories abound about this outsider who kicked tail, took names and quickly restored peace in this frontier town.

Roberto Maldonado Siller has heard those stories and just shakes his head. A former prosecutor for the state of Tamaulipas, he said that was a simpler era. Drug gangs didn’t have the arms, lawyers, financing, sophistication, ruthlessness, international reach and sheer numbers that they have today.

Maldonado said he understood the impatience of Nuevo Laredo residents for a quick fix. But he said that the problem was so vast and complex that one man couldn’t do it alone. The Iron Prosecutor isn’t riding to the rescue this time.

“If people want a hero, they should go to the movies,” he said.

Father Jesus Salazar Almaguer believes that only a spiritual awakening can change this town. His bishop has organized the communal ringing of bells in churches across Nuevo Laredo, a daily reminder for residents to pray for deliverance from the labyrinth of violence.

“The corruption is on all levels. The intimidation of the people is total,” Salazar said.

“We need God to show us the way.”