Tamaulipas, years and years of the same old filth

Translated for Borderland Beat by Otis B Fly-Wheel from a Sinembargo article

Tamaulipas , years and years of the same filth.

By Sandra Rodriguez Nieto

The kidnapping of a moderator of social network , her body bloodied appeared in a photo , in her twitter account, this put Tamaulipas under the gaze of the world again. Remembering that in this place 15 years ago the Zetas formed from Military deserters. No government strategy has put the brakes on the growth of the organisation., the corruption , the violence , the insecurity , and the impunity that converts this territory into the first without Law in Mexico.

In the year 2014 , in this frontier entity , is in first place for National Statistics on Kidnapping , more than half of which end in culpable homicides, including the three young Americans , who were allegedly kidnapped by the bodyguards of a mayor.

The strategy for the security of Tamaulipas ,a spear thrust in May past, for the Federal Government, they responded by killing one of the new managers. They cleanse the police, said the Human Rights Activist the Tamaulipan Raymondo Ramos, but when are they going to cleanse the government? Governments come and governments go , but Tamaulipas stays the same , years and years of decomposition and years and years of the same filth.

Mexico City , 7^th of January, The suspicion of what has been a relationship between the politicians and criminal organizations of Matamoros , Tamaulipas , transcended at least since midway of 2013, when it was published that the candidate of PAN for Mayor of this city would be Leiticia Salazar Vazquez, had received more than 3 million dollars from an business man who has links with Cartel Del Golfo.

Despite the evidence , Salazar Vazquez became the first Municipal President of Matamoros , and the suspicious business man , Luis Alfredo Biasi , in the title of Secretary of Social Improvement of the state, its said is her right arm , and habitually accompanies her in public events.

One month after assuming the governors position , after a Sunday of battles , blockades, and kidnapping , with no less than 13 killings , the 3^rd of November , the Mayor Salazar subjected a national note to ask the inhabitants of the city , not to go out into the streets because they knew that violence was due to an internal dispute of the criminal organization and that it would probably continue.

In the following January, the tax administration service , put an embargo on a merchant for allegedly importing illegal alcohol and cigarettes , and according to local web sites of Tamaulipas , the business was owned by none other than the distinguished Municipal Functionary Luis Biasi.

It was confirmed that the business located in the place of operation where this embargo took place belongs to the Secretary of Social Development of the Municipality of Matamoros , Luis Alfredo Biasi , published on February the 1^st on the Inforio.com.mx site.

But nothing occurred to the suspect functionary, so life continued in the normal manner for Matamoros , in the major part of Tamaulipas during 2014 , it was said “ in an environment of almost total impunity , corruption and violence , and the persistent reports of Terrorism , the killings , the kidnappings , the miles of stolen vehicles, the battles , the explosives , and associated crimes that have converted the state that is synonymous with un-governability in Mexico.

Report data on criminal incidences of common Jurisdiction in 2014 , between January and November , there were 528 homicides , almost 5,500 stolen vehicles , and 244 registered kidnappings , the latter offense in which the state ranks 1^st Nationally.

The Violence doesn't stop

 

A recounting of the crimes with the highest impact , only those reported to the PGJE , started on the night of 13^th of January , when armed men stormed the ranch of the ex mayor David Manriquez Perez , in the Municipality of Llera de Canales, to the south of Ciudad Victoria , there were shots heard on various occasions.

Later at the start of March , during a chase by Police with armed civilians , when the criminals launched a grenade into the interior of a primary school , with no consequences because classes had not yet started.

Other explosions without consequences happened soon after, days later also in Ciudad Victoria on the 24th March , and a month later on the night of April 25th , a group of armed men stormed a Taqueria, also in the capital , and opened fire indiscriminately killing two people , and wounding seven others , including a child of five years of age and an old woman of 72.

10 days after , also in Ciudad Victoria , the new Director of Investigations of the State Secretary of Public Security , Colonel Salvador de Haro Munoz , was assassinated in his car, together with his two bodyguards, allegedly by elements of the State Police.

According to the investigative professor and Director of Department of Government of the University of Texas in Brownsville, Guadalupe Correa , these violent events carried on throughout the rest of 2014, in towns such as Matamoros , Reynosa , Tampico or Mante , they have what he called " a third stage in the decapitation of the structure of both Los Zetas and Cartel del Golfo , and that everything indicates that they both have internal fighting between different factions.

There is no struggle between the cartels. The violence happens in plazas that are controlled by a group. It is an internal struggle of the Gulf Cartel arising due to arrested capos, it is like a third stage of decapitations of the groups, the moment of dismantling of the structure of sicarios , that was generated for this war in which supposed bosses such as Heriberto Lazcano , Z 40 , and Mario Pelon were already arrested, said the Academic.

In this context , the 13th of May, Miguel Angel Osorio Chong went to Reynosa , and responded with an answer to the internal conflicts in the cartels, introduced a new phase of the safety strategy for Tamaulipas with the objectives of " to disrupt the composition of criminal gangs , sealing the route of illicit traffic and guaranteeing reliable institutions.

Besides reinforcing previous actions such as intensifying surveillance at ports , airports and main routes, Osorio announced new measures , such as the intensive use of intelligence to dismantle criminal organizations, receiving anonymous tips , creation of Federal groups specializing in kidnapping , deployments of elements and technology in the vehicle network among others.

Also to divide the strategy into four zones, border , coast , central and south, with each zone assigned personnel from Sedena , and the Marines ( Semar ).

For the end of July, both the Federal Governor and the Governor , the PRI's Egido Torre Cantu , they were presuming a reduction of 38 per cent in the homicides of June compared to May, an increase in anonymous tips , and the arrest of 7 of the 14 priority objectives set at the start of the strategy.

The killing of the twitterer

At left is the last photo reported from the account of Twitter@Miut2, who collaborated with Valor por Tamaulipas.

Tamaulipas however returned to surprise not only Mexico but all the world this October past, when in the social networks were broadcasting the kidnapping and later the death of the Doctor Maria del Rosario Fuentes Rubio , who was identified with the Twitter account @Miut2 , who reported risks in the region.

This information presented a dose of terror that in Mexico, almost , could only come from Tamaulipas, and before international organization complained about the case , in the account of the victim in twitter appeared photos of her laying in a pool of blood.

About three days after , the 13th of October , a mother of a family from Progreso, Texas , had reported that her three children , Erica, Alejandro and Jose Angel Alvarado Rivera, of 26 , 22 , and 21 years of age respectively, had dissapeared while in the Municipality of Matamoros , visiting their father.

From the start and with the testimony of others , the mother of the family accused elements of the Hercules group, a security detail of the Mayor Leticia Salazar , as those responsible for the kidnapping , which ended on the 29th October when the three corpses of the youngsters were found together with that of a Mexican man.

The Hercules group had been started the previous September by Salazar and De Biasi , and according to the mother of the victims had been carrying out the business of the latter when they came across the van in which the victims were traveling.

Reported by Itzli on a BB article

After a few days on the morning of Monday 3rd of November , the delegate appointed by Osorio Chong to the border of the state in the new strategy from security launched by the Federal Government , General Ricardo Cesar Villareal, was executed on the Monterrey - Neuvo Leon highway.

Tamaulipas presents actually several security problems , they are reinforced by the weakness of its institutions of administration of Justice at all levels, its very limited degree of community organisation and by absolute censorship of nearly all local media, wrote Guadalupe Correa this end of year in his report Militarization and public security in Tamaulipas , for the Woodrow Wilson Centre in the United States.

In addition , the involvement of organised crime with political power in almost all areas of public life in the region with the consequent lack of results by the authorities on the matter of public safety after more than 10 years in dispute , said Correa in an interview , the allowed the creation of an unconstitutional police force , as formed by Salazar in Matamoros , and which resulted in the murder of the four young people.

In a situation like that of Mexico , added the investigator, where the police do not carry out their duty , but adopt extra-institutional positions, where there is no accountability, there is the possibility of cases like in Iguala and the missing 43 normalistas, where the police go too far , because there is no coordination or reconstruction of the police.

All of this concludes , because of the history of the state in the last century , it is the organised criminal networks with all the rest of the aspects of public life in the state , and because Los Zetas have the military training, they expanded the concept of violence and organised crime in the country. The CDG have been provided with political power that they have enjoyed for years.

If Los Zetas and the CDG could arrive and control the state in this form, the police , who enters and leaves politics, it could be a large union. The power that you have given to the Politicians he has given to organized crime, to protect , to which all the groups have operated to strengthen this system which is controlled by criminal groups, he added.

With this analysis agreeing with Raymundo Ramos , head of the Committee of Human Rights of Nuevo Leon , he assures that no government since Vincente Fox Quesada, have been interested in really solving the problem of insecurity and corruption that affects Tamaulipas since the start of the century.

They dont want to resolve the problems of corruption because they would have to start, by putting Thomas Yarrington in jail , the former governor identified by USA as a money launderer for two cartels , in addition to being an accomplice to murder of the former candidate Rodolfo Torre Cantu, says Ramos.

They are protecting him , because , with a deployment of armed forces , marines and army , and huge intelligence apartus , interestingly they have no idea where he is. From here on everything that the Federal Government announces is a simulation, he adds.

Like Correa , Ramos concludes that the lack of desire to get to the bottom of the problem of insecurity in Tamaulipas, like all of Mexico : its will.

"The problem is not attacked in the background , and I repeat , however , that although they have spent billions of pesos on armaments , wages , armored vehicles, this will not give results because the will is not perceived to be there, because while they purge the police , who will purge the government?".

Original article in Spanish at Sinembargo