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Violence takes toll on Nuevo Laredo
09:48 PM CDT on Monday, August 15, 2005

By ALFREDO CORCHADO / The Dallas Morning News


NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico – In the posh Juárez neighborhood, bar manager Raul Cruz prepared to issue pink slips to 45 employees at Las Cananas Revolution Bar. They lost their jobs Friday when the company chose to shut down rather than face a new midnight curfew, part of a crackdown on organized crime.

Later that day, just down the street on Paseo Colón, an assassin with deadly accuracy ambushed Juan Resendez Jasso, firing at least 14 shots as the 33-year-old businessman drove his white Silverado pickup with Texas plates after buying a takeout order of tacos.


The impact of such killings extends far beyond the victims and their families. With each killing, Nuevo Laredo itself is slowly dying, some residents say.

"There are 500,000 souls here, and we're all undergoing a slow collective psychological breakdown," said Heriberto Cantu Deandar, editorial page editor of El Manana newspaper. "They're killing us spiritually, morally, emotionally, economically, bleeding us slowly, day by day. What's worst is there is no endgame here, no date to begin reconstructing our lives, or our businesses. It's a slow time bomb."

So far this year, 111 people have been killed in the city, shattering 2004's total of 77. Nationwide, the death toll in the violent turf war by rival drug cartels stands at more than 850, with 14 killed during the weekend.

Authorities on both sides of the border predict the killing will continue – if not worsen – in the weeks to come, particularly in Nuevo Laredo, where rival cartels are battling for the lucrative Interstate 35 corridor and control of a $40 billion illegal drug trade. Neither side seems ready to back down.

Aiming for normalcy
On the surface, Nuevo Laredo is trying desperately to remain normal. Two days after a city councilman was ambushed on his way to work, city employees and visitors milled around an exhibition on the city's 157th anniversary as if nothing had happened.

But telltale signs are everywhere. Federal agents toting high-powered weapons parade up and down streets in the back of pickup trucks. Checkpoints are creating traffic jams throughout the city. Mayor Daniel Peña Cantu, who once cherished his independence, now rides surrounded by bodyguards in a white SUV with tinted bulletproof windows.

Some have given up hope. Homes with for-sale signs dot many neighborhoods. Children are kept indoors, even during summer vacation, by parents fearful of stray bullets.

In the affluent neighborhood of Madero, residents are still spooked by a July 28 shootout in which gunmen used rocket-propelled grenades and other high-powered weapons. One neighbor who identified himself as Mateo recalled the screeching halt of vehicles and called the incident "the longest 20 minutes of our lives."

"For 20 minutes there was gunfire, grenades and God knows what else," he said, adding that he and his wife "hit the ground and stayed down until the shooting ended. And during that time, no police authority or soldier showed up. Unbelievable!"

He said his own car was riddled with bullets.

Last week, city officials and business leaders met with Gov. Eugenio Hernández and pressed him on the security issue. Some complained that during the last 10 years, the city has lost half of its 60 maquiladoras, or foreign-owned manufacturing facilities, once an economic lifeline, in part to fears of insecurity.

Others were concerned about the lack of tourists, especially those from Texas. Sales in the downtown area, just blocks across the international bridge from Laredo, are down 80 percent, said Jacobo Pablo "Jack" Suneson, a shopkeeper and member of the tourism board.

"I'm not so much concerned about tourists not coming to Nuevo Laredo," Carlos E. Cantu Rosas, a former mayor, told El Diario newspaper, "as I am about Nuevo Laredoans packing up and moving out of here."

Media coverage
In Laredo, Mayor Betty Flores said media coverage has exacerbated fears.

"I have talked to a lot of people about this situation, and those that work here and live there have told me that if they stay away from the news reports that they are OK. They go to the groceries, the movies or play outside just as they always have and avoid the media reports. Those that have been consumed by the media accounts live by them and have been deeply affected. It is a broad range of emotions from anger, sadness to flippant same-old attitudes."

For generations, Texans have crossed the border to cut loose, but now even the lure of a good time may not be enough. Boystown, Nuevo Laredo's red-light district, has been nearly deserted. Scantily clad women in heels clicketyclack down lonely streets, offering their services at bargain prices. Said a woman named Marisela, "Tell the gringos to take a cab from the airport and make a beeline for Boystown. They'll be safe."

At Cananas Revolution Bar, black stools rested on top of tables Friday afternoon. Instead of gearing up for a big night, owners decided it didn't make business sense to shut down the place at midnight, as the new curfew demanded, when customers typically don't arrive till 11:30 and want to party till 4 a.m.

"This is martial law disguised as a voluntary curfew," said Mr. Cruz, the manager. "But we'll do whatever the federal government asks for the sake of a safer city, even at the cost of losing 45 employees and even though the killings take place in daylight in front of them."

'An internal problem'
These days, an army general is in charge of the city's security and reports directly to President Vicente Fox. That's OK with Police Chief Omar Pimentel, whose duties have been stripped down so much that he sounds more like a tourism official than a law enforcement authority, using every opportunity to urge tourists to return.

"Our anger and our love for this city are bigger than any problems we face," Chief Pimentel said as he waited for a bus of visitors from San Antonio. "Tourists are not being targeted. This is an internal problem among members of organized groups, and if you don't have a reason to fear, you won't be targeted."

Most of the 111 killings in the city this year have been linked to organized crime, Chief Pimentel and other city officials insist. They say the dead, whether slain police officers or a city councilman, possibly had ties to one of the two drug cartels.

But the psychological toll continues. Across the street from where gunmen killed a policewoman last week, a homeless man named Filiberto Perales Guerrero, 61, gazed at dozens of armed federal agents collecting evidence. The gunshots that day woke Mr. Perales from an afternoon nap and to a new reality: His hometown really had changed for the worse, he said.

As a reporter tried to take his photograph, Mr. Perales screamed, "I want to live, to see my grandchildren again. I told you I didn't see anything in this insane city."