http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12320581.htm
Posted on Sun, Aug. 07, 2005

Border crossing is now death zone

At a key U.S.-Mexico border crossing, more than 100 people have been killed and hundreds more are missing between Laredo and Nuevo Laredo.

BY SUSANA HAYWARD
Knight Ridder News Service

ON THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER -- In September, Brenda Cisneros celebrated her 23rd birthday with her family at a restaurant in Laredo, Texas. She begged her father to let her go to a concert with a friend across the Mexico border in Nuevo Laredo.

''Please, Daddy, I'm a grown-up now,'' her father, Pablo Cisneros, remembers her pleading. Reluctantly, he said yes. ''I know you're legally an adult,'' he recalls telling her, ``but remember, you'll always be my baby.''

His daughter and her best friend, Yvette Martinez, set out for Nuevo Laredo and a concert featuring the popular ranchero singer Pepe Aguilar on Sept. 17. Cisneros hasn't seen them since.

The last he knows is that she and Martinez, a 27-year-old mother of two, called a friend at 4 a.m. to say they were heading back from the concert and were just five blocks from the U.S. border.

THE TOLL MOUNTS

Since January, at least 107 people have been killed in a fierce war that pits rival drug gangs in an increasingly violent struggle to control this key crossing point into the United States. Bodies are found in streets showing evidence of painful deaths: tortured, bound and gagged, handcuffed, with missing limbs. Some have been burned alive.

But the deaths are only part of the story. Since last fall, 23 Americans and at least 400 Mexicans have disappeared in Nuevo Laredo, and their relatives complain that little is being done to investigate the disappearances or stop the gangs who perpetrate them.

No one knows who is doing the kidnapping. Some residents and police blame the abductions on the same gangs that are battling for drug turf. They talk of ''safe houses,'' where victims are taken until ransoms are paid. Some say young women are housed there for drug lords ''to play with'' until they're used up, ending with death.

COPS TO BLAME?

Others, such as Martinez's stepfather, William Slemaker, blame the police. He says he spotted his stepdaughter's 2001 pearl-white Mitsubishi in a municipal police parking lot in Nuevo Laredo about a month after her disappearance but that when he pointed it out to police they denied it was hers. Later, the car turned up in the lot of a private towing company, which sought $2,500 for storage before it could be released. Slemaker said he didn't have the money, and the car remains in one of the company's lots.

''There [are] fingerprints, DNA, who knows what else inside that car,'' said Slemaker, who quit his job as a railroad worker to help Pablo Cisneros found a website called laredosmissing.com.

Mexican officials said they were concerned that the reports of kidnappings and violence were hurting Nuevo Laredo's reputation as a tourist destination. They said most of those who had disappeared had ties to drug traffickers and that others were safe.

''In my experience, most of the missing and murder victims are involved in organized crime,'' said Daniel Hernandez, Mexico's consul general in Laredo. ``Sometimes, it's involuntary; it can be a cousin of a cousin and they're at the wrong place at the wrong time.''

U.S. officials are less certain. The State Department, at the urging of U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza, has issued a travel advisory for Mexico, warning U.S. citizens to stay clear of Nuevo Laredo.

U.S. REACH LIMITED

The United States can do little to solve crimes in Mexico. U.S. authorities can't go into Mexico to investigate a crime against an American unless Mexican authorities invite them. So far, there's been no such invitation.

Cisneros said the months since his daughter disappeared had been hard. He said he could barely eat and that his chest burned.

''My heart and soul are broken,'' he said. ``All my energy is spent on finding our daughters. But I know what will cure me: Brenda.''

Knight Ridder special correspondent Janet Schwartz contributed to this report.