More disturbing news from Bush's favorite hell hole

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/11/news/laredo.php

Laredo fears anarchy across the Rio Grande
By Ralph Blumenthal The New York Times

FRIDAY, AUGUST 12, 2005
LAREDO, Texas The killings and kidnappings across the Rio Grande have kept Marco Alvarado and his wife from visiting her kin in Nuevo Laredo.

William Slemaker and Pablo Cisneros haunt the border searching for clues and awaiting news of their kidnapped and long-missing daughters.

Carlos Carranco Jr. and other teachers are spending vacation days in school, wresting blue plastic guns from each other and learning how to detect drug problems and subdue violent students, lessons that will be followed by a mock siege this fall.

Such is life these days in Laredo, the trading powerhouse and booming inland port of 225,000 people that has been unnerved by the drug wars and escalating violence in its Mexican sister city.

On the surface, the Texas city remains almost absurdly quaint, a frontier-like outpost of steepled churches, shaded plazas, vintage warehouses, ironwork galleries and narrow streets where hot rodders cruise on Sunday nights. The high point of the year is Washington's Birthday Celebration, a lavish debutante pageant dedicated to the nation's first first couple, George and Martha.

Nuevo Laredo's grim record includes more than 100 unsolved killings over the last year, including a police officer shot to death Wednesday. A woman identified as a former municipal officer was also wounded in the incident and was reported to be in critical condition.

The anarchy has included downtown shootouts, brazen assassinations (a police chief on his first day on the job in June and a City Council member on Aug. 5) and the kidnappings of at least 43 Americans in the last 12 months, casting a pall over two communities long accustomed to regarding each other as neighbors united, not divided, by the border.

The people of Laredo do not consider the rampage to be a challenge solely for the overmatched Mexican authorities.

"It's not 'their' problem - it's our problem," said Alan Jackson, a Laredo insurance executive whose family roots go back two and a half centuries to the Spanish colonization.

Laredo's mayor, Elizabeth Flores, whose forebears also were original settlers, said Los Dos Laredos have always been one big place. When people visit the other city over one of two international bridges, "they cross the street, they don't cross the river," she said.

Though trade continues, casual crossings have declined as fears have risen of catching a stray bullet or running afoul of Mexican police officers in league with criminal gangs. A recent series of mysterious calls to some prominent Laredans demanding thousands of dollars for protection from kidnapping did nothing to ease the anxiety.

Those who do venture over the border for business or family ties "are looking around their shoulders - you can sense the nervousness," said Antonio Rodriguez, associate dean of the college of business at Texas A&M International University here.

"I hope I don't get into trouble on the other side with something I said," he added at the end of a telephone interview.

Young people long drawn to the liberal night life of Nuevo Laredo - where you were said to be of drinking age as soon as you could push a peso across the bar - are being kept home by worried parents.

Some shrug and live with the risks. Lynda RamÃÂ*rez, 25, an art director for a large company in Laredo, has chosen to live in Nuevo Laredo with her family and future husband. "Yes, it's my home and I'm not going to hide," she said. She added that it would be no different "if I lived at the Bronx."

In the end, Laredans say, geography is destiny. The city straddles Interstate 35, the highway funneling traffic from Mexico City and Monterrey through the U.S. heartland as far north as Lake Superior, so it is a strategic gateway for merchants on both sides of the law.

Laredo, whose population has doubled in less than 20 years, is bustling with Mexican shoppers and smugglers enticed by the profusion of appliances, electronics and fashions, and a-rumble with nearly 10,000 trucks and 1,800 loaded rail cars that pass daily through the hectic border crossing.

Local officials worry not just about spreading drug violence but potential terrorism as well. "Our motto," said Norman Townsend, the supervisory FBI agent in Laredo, "is, if something bad were to happen, he didn't come through Laredo."

Illegal immigration here remains a tribute to human ingenuity. One would-be immigrant was sewn inside an overstuffed van seat and discovered only when he moved.

Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said the Mexican authorities were committed to restoring order and "have been making some progress."

Still, two recent killings on Laredo streets have been linked to drug gangs, said Chief John Montoya of the U.S. Border Patrol's Laredo sector. And on May 23, accounts of a local gang shooting caused mass panic at Lyndon B. Johnson High School, prompting 703 absences.

A high-profile carjacking in January showed just how vulnerable locals can be. Héctor Bolaños, a leading Mexican customs broker with business and family ties on both sides of the border, had his new car taken at gunpoint in Nuevo Laredo. Bolaños, who uses a wheelchair, was left in the street.

He complained to the governor of Tamaluipas, demanding his car back. The police delivered it, slightly battered, two days later.

In July, more than 100 teachers and administrators gathered in a Laredo high school for demonstrations on how to detect drugs and control abusive students. "Do not approach from behind because the strongest kick a human being can deliver is a mule kick," cautioned Cullen Grissom, a former police officer now with the Texas Engineering Extension Service of Texas A&M, which is providing the training.

Afterward, Grissom and a partner handed out blue plastic automatics and showed the teachers how to safely disarm each other.

The sessions are continuing, with police officers responding recently to a mock mass shooting at the school. In September, school officials, teachers and public safety officers are to simulate another a large-scale attack.

Anxiety over a drug threat in schools and elsewhere is well-founded, Montoya said. The total value of drug seizures in the sprawling Laredo sector has risen only slightly, but while the amount of marijuana has declined, cocaine seizures rose to more than two tons in the period from October through June, compared with one and a half tons in those months a year earlier.

To Slemaker, the violence has struck with particular vengeance. On Sept. 18, his stepdaughter, Yvette Martinez, 27, a mother of two girls, and Cisneros's daughter, Brenda, who was celebrating her 23rd birthday, disappeared after attending a concert by the Mexican pop star Pepe Aguilar in Nuevo Laredo. Witness accounts suggested they were stopped by the Mexican police after 4 a.m. five blocks south of the international bridge, Slemaker said. Nine others vanished that night, he said, for a total of at least 43 Americans abducted in the past 12 months. Three were murdered, 17 were released and 23 remain missing, he said.

Although the Mexican police turned away his inquiries, Slemaker said, he later found his stepdaughter's white Mitsubishi in a Nuevo Laredo wrecker's lot used by the police, with dents indicating that the car had been hit from behind. He said he has had little cooperation from the U.S. authorities other than Representative Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, so the two fathers regularly cruise Nuevo Laredo in their own investigation.

"Our pain is greater than our fear," said Slemaker, 43, a train conductor and trucker. "And we're past the pain - we're mad now."


LAREDO, Texas The killings and kidnappings across the Rio Grande have kept Marco Alvarado and his wife from visiting her kin in Nuevo Laredo.

William Slemaker and Pablo Cisneros haunt the border searching for clues and awaiting news of their kidnapped and long-missing daughters.

Carlos Carranco Jr. and other teachers are spending vacation days in school, wresting blue plastic guns from each other and learning how to detect drug problems and subdue violent students, lessons that will be followed by a mock siege this fall.

Such is life these days in Laredo, the trading powerhouse and booming inland port of 225,000 people that has been unnerved by the drug wars and escalating violence in its Mexican sister city.

On the surface, the Texas city remains almost absurdly quaint, a frontier-like outpost of steepled churches, shaded plazas, vintage warehouses, ironwork galleries and narrow streets where hot rodders cruise on Sunday nights. The high point of the year is Washington's Birthday Celebration, a lavish debutante pageant dedicated to the nation's first first couple, George and Martha.

Nuevo Laredo's grim record includes more than 100 unsolved killings over the last year, including a police officer shot to death Wednesday. A woman identified as a former municipal officer was also wounded in the incident and was reported to be in critical condition.

The anarchy has included downtown shootouts, brazen assassinations (a police chief on his first day on the job in June and a City Council member on Aug. 5) and the kidnappings of at least 43 Americans in the last 12 months, casting a pall over two communities long accustomed to regarding each other as neighbors united, not divided, by the border.

The people of Laredo do not consider the rampage to be a challenge solely for the overmatched Mexican authorities.

"It's not 'their' problem - it's our problem," said Alan Jackson, a Laredo insurance executive whose family roots go back two and a half centuries to the Spanish colonization.

Laredo's mayor, Elizabeth Flores, whose forebears also were original settlers, said Los Dos Laredos have always been one big place. When people visit the other city over one of two international bridges, "they cross the street, they don't cross the river," she said.

Though trade continues, casual crossings have declined as fears have risen of catching a stray bullet or running afoul of Mexican police officers in league with criminal gangs. A recent series of mysterious calls to some prominent Laredans demanding thousands of dollars for protection from kidnapping did nothing to ease the anxiety.

Those who do venture over the border for business or family ties "are looking around their shoulders - you can sense the nervousness," said Antonio Rodriguez, associate dean of the college of business at Texas A&M International University here.

"I hope I don't get into trouble on the other side with something I said," he added at the end of a telephone interview.

Young people long drawn to the liberal night life of Nuevo Laredo - where you were said to be of drinking age as soon as you could push a peso across the bar - are being kept home by worried parents.

Some shrug and live with the risks. Lynda RamÃÂ*rez, 25, an art director for a large company in Laredo, has chosen to live in Nuevo Laredo with her family and future husband. "Yes, it's my home and I'm not going to hide," she said. She added that it would be no different "if I lived at the Bronx."

In the end, Laredans say, geography is destiny. The city straddles Interstate 35, the highway funneling traffic from Mexico City and Monterrey through the U.S. heartland as far north as Lake Superior, so it is a strategic gateway for merchants on both sides of the law.

Laredo, whose population has doubled in less than 20 years, is bustling with Mexican shoppers and smugglers enticed by the profusion of appliances, electronics and fashions, and a-rumble with nearly 10,000 trucks and 1,800 loaded rail cars that pass daily through the hectic border crossing.

Local officials worry not just about spreading drug violence but potential terrorism as well. "Our motto," said Norman Townsend, the supervisory FBI agent in Laredo, "is, if something bad were to happen, he didn't come through Laredo."

Illegal immigration here remains a tribute to human ingenuity. One would-be immigrant was sewn inside an overstuffed van seat and discovered only when he moved.

Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said the Mexican authorities were committed to restoring order and "have been making some progress."

Still, two recent killings on Laredo streets have been linked to drug gangs, said Chief John Montoya of the U.S. Border Patrol's Laredo sector. And on May 23, accounts of a local gang shooting caused mass panic at Lyndon B. Johnson High School, prompting 703 absences.

A high-profile carjacking in January showed just how vulnerable locals can be. Héctor Bolaños, a leading Mexican customs broker with business and family ties on both sides of the border, had his new car taken at gunpoint in Nuevo Laredo. Bolaños, who uses a wheelchair, was left in the street.

He complained to the governor of Tamaluipas, demanding his car back. The police delivered it, slightly battered, two days later.

In July, more than 100 teachers and administrators gathered in a Laredo high school for demonstrations on how to detect drugs and control abusive students. "Do not approach from behind because the strongest kick a human being can deliver is a mule kick," cautioned Cullen Grissom, a former police officer now with the Texas Engineering Extension Service of Texas A&M, which is providing the training.

Afterward, Grissom and a partner handed out blue plastic automatics and showed the teachers how to safely disarm each other.

The sessions are continuing, with police officers responding recently to a mock mass shooting at the school. In September, school officials, teachers and public safety officers are to simulate another a large-scale attack.

Anxiety over a drug threat in schools and elsewhere is well-founded, Montoya said. The total value of drug seizures in the sprawling Laredo sector has risen only slightly, but while the amount of marijuana has declined, cocaine seizures rose to more than two tons in the period from October through June, compared with one and a half tons in those months a year earlier.

To Slemaker, the violence has struck with particular vengeance. On Sept. 18, his stepdaughter, Yvette Martinez, 27, a mother of two girls, and Cisneros's daughter, Brenda, who was celebrating her 23rd birthday, disappeared after attending a concert by the Mexican pop star Pepe Aguilar in Nuevo Laredo. Witness accounts suggested they were stopped by the Mexican police after 4 a.m. five blocks south of the international bridge, Slemaker said. Nine others vanished that night, he said, for a total of at least 43 Americans abducted in the past 12 months. Three were murdered, 17 were released and 23 remain missing, he said.

Although the Mexican police turned away his inquiries, Slemaker said, he later found his stepdaughter's white Mitsubishi in a Nuevo Laredo wrecker's lot used by the police, with dents indicating that the car had been hit from behind. He said he has had little cooperation from the U.S. authorities other than Representative Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, so the two fathers regularly cruise Nuevo Laredo in their own investigation.

"Our pain is greater than our fear," said Slemaker, 43, a train conductor and trucker. "And we're past the pain - we're mad now."


LAREDO, Texas The killings and kidnappings across the Rio Grande have kept Marco Alvarado and his wife from visiting her kin in Nuevo Laredo.

William Slemaker and Pablo Cisneros haunt the border searching for clues and awaiting news of their kidnapped and long-missing daughters.

Carlos Carranco Jr. and other teachers are spending vacation days in school, wresting blue plastic guns from each other and learning how to detect drug problems and subdue violent students, lessons that will be followed by a mock siege this fall.

Such is life these days in Laredo, the trading powerhouse and booming inland port of 225,000 people that has been unnerved by the drug wars and escalating violence in its Mexican sister city.

On the surface, the Texas city remains almost absurdly quaint, a frontier-like outpost of steepled churches, shaded plazas, vintage warehouses, ironwork galleries and narrow streets where hot rodders cruise on Sunday nights. The high point of the year is Washington's Birthday Celebration, a lavish debutante pageant dedicated to the nation's first first couple, George and Martha.

Nuevo Laredo's grim record includes more than 100 unsolved killings over the last year, including a police officer shot to death Wednesday. A woman identified as a former municipal officer was also wounded in the incident and was reported to be in critical condition.

The anarchy has included downtown shootouts, brazen assassinations (a police chief on his first day on the job in June and a City Council member on Aug. 5) and the kidnappings of at least 43 Americans in the last 12 months, casting a pall over two communities long accustomed to regarding each other as neighbors united, not divided, by the border.

The people of Laredo do not consider the rampage to be a challenge solely for the overmatched Mexican authorities.

"It's not 'their' problem - it's our problem," said Alan Jackson, a Laredo insurance executive whose family roots go back two and a half centuries to the Spanish colonization.

Laredo's mayor, Elizabeth Flores, whose forebears also were original settlers, said Los Dos Laredos have always been one big place. When people visit the other city over one of two international bridges, "they cross the street, they don't cross the river," she said.

Though trade continues, casual crossings have declined as fears have risen of catching a stray bullet or running afoul of Mexican police officers in league with criminal gangs. A recent series of mysterious calls to some prominent Laredans demanding thousands of dollars for protection from kidnapping did nothing to ease the anxiety.

Those who do venture over the border for business or family ties "are looking around their shoulders - you can sense the nervousness," said Antonio Rodriguez, associate dean of the college of business at Texas A&M International University here.

"I hope I don't get into trouble on the other side with something I said," he added at the end of a telephone interview.

Young people long drawn to the liberal night life of Nuevo Laredo - where you were said to be of drinking age as soon as you could push a peso across the bar - are being kept home by worried parents.

Some shrug and live with the risks. Lynda RamÃÂ*rez, 25, an art director for a large company in Laredo, has chosen to live in Nuevo Laredo with her family and future husband. "Yes, it's my home and I'm not going to hide," she said. She added that it would be no different "if I lived at the Bronx."

In the end, Laredans say, geography is destiny. The city straddles Interstate 35, the highway funneling traffic from Mexico City and Monterrey through the U.S. heartland as far north as Lake Superior, so it is a strategic gateway for merchants on both sides of the law.

Laredo, whose population has doubled in less than 20 years, is bustling with Mexican shoppers and smugglers enticed by the profusion of appliances, electronics and fashions, and a-rumble with nearly 10,000 trucks and 1,800 loaded rail cars that pass daily through the hectic border crossing.

Local officials worry not just about spreading drug violence but potential terrorism as well. "Our motto," said Norman Townsend, the supervisory FBI agent in Laredo, "is, if something bad were to happen, he didn't come through Laredo."

Illegal immigration here remains a tribute to human ingenuity. One would-be immigrant was sewn inside an overstuffed van seat and discovered only when he moved.

Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said the Mexican authorities were committed to restoring order and "have been making some progress."

Still, two recent killings on Laredo streets have been linked to drug gangs, said Chief John Montoya of the U.S. Border Patrol's Laredo sector. And on May 23, accounts of a local gang shooting caused mass panic at Lyndon B. Johnson High School, prompting 703 absences.

A high-profile carjacking in January showed just how vulnerable locals can be. Héctor Bolaños, a leading Mexican customs broker with business and family ties on both sides of the border, had his new car taken at gunpoint in Nuevo Laredo. Bolaños, who uses a wheelchair, was left in the street.

He complained to the governor of Tamaluipas, demanding his car back. The police delivered it, slightly battered, two days later.

In July, more than 100 teachers and administrators gathered in a Laredo high school for demonstrations on how to detect drugs and control abusive students. "Do not approach from behind because the strongest kick a human being can deliver is a mule kick," cautioned Cullen Grissom, a former police officer now with the Texas Engineering Extension Service of Texas A&M, which is providing the training.

Afterward, Grissom and a partner handed out blue plastic automatics and showed the teachers how to safely disarm each other.

The sessions are continuing, with police officers responding recently to a mock mass shooting at the school. In September, school officials, teachers and public safety officers are to simulate another a large-scale attack.

Anxiety over a drug threat in schools and elsewhere is well-founded, Montoya said. The total value of drug seizures in the sprawling Laredo sector has risen only slightly, but while the amount of marijuana has declined, cocaine seizures rose to more than two tons in the period from October through June, compared with one and a half tons in those months a year earlier.

To Slemaker, the violence has struck with particular vengeance. On Sept. 18, his stepdaughter, Yvette Martinez, 27, a mother of two girls, and Cisneros's daughter, Brenda, who was celebrating her 23rd birthday, disappeared after attending a concert by the Mexican pop star Pepe Aguilar in Nuevo Laredo. Witness accounts suggested they were stopped by the Mexican police after 4 a.m. five blocks south of the international bridge, Slemaker said. Nine others vanished that night, he said, for a total of at least 43 Americans abducted in the past 12 months. Three were murdered, 17 were released and 23 remain missing, he said.

Although the Mexican police turned away his inquiries, Slemaker said, he later found his stepdaughter's white Mitsubishi in a Nuevo Laredo wrecker's lot used by the police, with dents indicating that the car had been hit from behind. He said he has had little cooperation from the U.S. authorities other than Representative Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, so the two fathers regularly cruise Nuevo Laredo in their own investigation.

"Our pain is greater than our fear," said Slemaker, 43, a train conductor and trucker. "And we're past the pain - we're mad now."