U.S. issues Mexico travel alert
Texas border among the areas of mounting violence

April 21, 2007, 9:00AM
By PATTY REINERT and DUDLEY ALTHAUS
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

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Travel warning for south border WASHINGTON — The State Department warned Americans on Friday to be careful while traveling in Mexico — including the Texas-Mexico borderlands, Monterrey and Acapulco — because of recent drug-related violence and kidnappings.

"U.S. citizens residing and traveling in Mexico should exercise caution when in unfamiliar areas and be aware of their surroundings at all times," the department said in a statement that fell short of an official warning against traveling to the country. "Though there is no evidence that U.S. citizens are specifically targeted. (But) Mexican and foreign bystanders have been injured or killed in some violent attacks, demonstrating the heightened risk in public places."

The advisory said drug violence was present in many parts of the country, urban and rural, in recent months, including the execution-style murders of Mexican officials in Nuevo Laredo.

In recent years, dozens of U.S. citizens have been kidnapped in that border city, across from Laredo, Texas, and more than two dozen cases remain unresolved. New cases of kidnappings continue to be reported, the department said.

"Drug cartel members have been known to follow and harass U.S. citizens traveling in their vehicles, particularly in border areas including Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros," across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, the department said.

The advisory said American citizens should try to travel on main roads during daylight hours and to stay in well-known tourist destinations and areas with better security.

Besides the border areas, the broad advisory says extra precautions should be taken when traveling in the Mexican states of Michoacan, Baja California, Nuevo Leon and Guerrero. Nuevo Leon is the home of Monterrey, an important city for U.S.-Mexico business interests, and Guerrero is home to Acapulco, one of Mexico's top tourist destinations.

"We ask U.S. citizens to exercise all due caution while in Mexico and remain vigilant for any situation that could become dangerous," said Tony Garza, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico.

The advisory was not well-received by many Mexicans, coming as it did amid the headlines surrounding the killings of 32 students at Virginia Tech. An editorial cartoon Friday in Reforma, Mexico City's largest newspaper, depicted the pistol-wielding perpetrator of the Virginia shootings with a sign, in English, saying "Warning: Mexico is too dangerous."


Extraditions spur violence

The body count from gangland violence in Mexico has mounted steadily during the past four years as rival gangs battled for control of lucrative smuggling routes into the United States for cocaine, marijuana and other narcotics.

Police — some of whom, analysts say, were in the employ of one gang or another — have been singled out in recent months. Eighteen have been killed in the Monterrey area alone since the first of the year.

The violence has worsened since Mexico extradited to the United States several drug-gang bosses. In Tijuana on Wednesday, according to wire service accounts, four masked gunmen in the employ of a drug cartel stormed a large hospital and battled police in an attempt to free confederates. When the smoke cleared, two of the gunmen were in custody, and two police officers were dead. A third person also was killed. The police did not say what happened to the other two gunmen.

Among those extradited to America was Osiel Cardenas, the head of the Gulf Cartel, based in the Mexican cities bordering far South Texas. His gang has been fighting for years with a rival group based in the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa for control of Monterrey, Nuevo Laredo and other cities near the Texas border. But since Cardenas' extradition for trial in Houston, Mexican authorities say, his underlings have been fighting one another as well for control of the organization.

Earlier this week, Mexican soldiers detained more than 100 local police officers in Nuevo Leon state for questioning about suspected ties to drug traffickers. None of the officers was a member of the force in Monterrey.

By some official counts, there have been at least 700 drug slayings in Mexico this year, including about 50 in Monterrey. More than 2,000 killings were recorded in the country last year. Twenty-one people died in a single day of violence nationwide this week.

Reinert reported from Washington; Althaus from Mexico City.

patty.reinert@chron.com; dudley.althaus@chron.com


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