Reynosa, Tamaulipas: The Hunting of Innocent Civilians

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

Note: For the original post about the Reynosa killings, please click this hyperlink

Last Saturday, the city of Reynosa was again a ghost town of desolate avenues and closed shops. Messages circulating on WhatsApp asking people not to leave their homes and alert their families that the nightmare had begun again.

That day a caravan formed by trucks and sedan cars arrived in Reynosa from Río Bravo. Those who were part of the convoy toured four colonies in the east - Almaguer, Lampacitos, Unidad Obrera and Bienestar - shooting at the people they were encountering in their path.

Construction workers, workers repairing the sewer, a young newly graduated nurse, an elderly person who walked under the burning sun (and who was shot in the throat), the owner of a grocery store and a customer who was shopping at the time he passed the hitmen's armed criminal cell.

In total, 14 people whose lives were cut up on the chopping block at the whim of the murderers.

The citizens of Reynosa have learned to live between shootings that are recorded almost every day, at any time. It is common for citizens to check their social networks before leaving home or work, in order to avoid war zones: roads in which persecutions are recorded, or vehicles are burned.

It’s not strange that civilians lose their lives by being caught in the crossfire of the groups that dispute control of that border city.

But nothing like this had ever happened. The hunt for innocent people, without a criminal record or any relationship with organized crime. "Unpublished, unprecedented," said Attorney Irving Barrios.

In April 2017, a former bodyguard who had become leader of the Gulf Cartel, Julián Manuel Loisa Salinas, El Comandante Toro, was killed by the Navy.

Loisa was fleeing for the sixth time from an operation designed to stop him. On that occasion he couldn't escape. The truck in which he was fleeing crashed into a tree: he descended opening fire on the sailors. He was riddled on the spot.

His death unleashed two days of chaos and extreme violence in Reynosa. His men burned shops, cars, buses, cargo trucks. There were 32 blockades in the city.

The Gulf Cartel itself circulated audios ordering people not to leave their homes. There were versions that a group of Cyclones - one of the factions of the cartel - had been sent from Matamoros to take over the city, one of the main drug and migrant crossings: a kidnapping gold mine, "protection fee", hydrocarbon theft and extortion.

The command was assumed by Jesús García, El Güero Jessi. But other cartel leaders opposed: Alberto Salinas, El Betillo; Petronilo Flores, aka El Metro 100 or El Comandante Panilo; Lui Alberto Blanco, El Pelochas, as well as Juan Miguel Lizardi, nicknamed Miguelito 56.

Between April and July of that year, 90 executions were recorded in Reynosa. There was talk of a hundred disappearances. Clashes between Los Metros (fraction of the CDG whose stronghold is Reynosa), Los Ciclones (armed wing created by Alfredo Cárdenas Martínez, El Contador) and Los Escorpiones (fraction created by Antonio Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillén, aka Tony Tormenta, and composed of ex-police officers) intensified.

The internal struggle ended in a bloodbath that plunged Reynosa into darkness. El Betillo and El Güero Jessi were killed. El Pelochas and El Metro 100, arrested. His successors continued to be engaged in a struggle that has made Reynosa one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico - and with the greatest perception of insecurity.

In 2019, 140 inhabitants of Charco Escondido, just 20 kilometers from Reynosa, left their homes: the hitmen had entered the community to burn several homes: seven people from the same family were killed days later.

In the middle of all that fire, the Northeast Cartel was also introduced into the area, commanded by a nephew of the bloodthirsty Z-40, former leader of the Zetas: Juan Gerardo Treviño, known as El Huevo.

For years, the bodies of executed people have appeared on rural roads, as happened in May 2021 when six men in tactical vests were found with gunshots in the head, or as happened in August last year, when the heads of three "bodyguards" of Commander Maestrín (a lieutenant of Miguelito 56) appeared.

For years, blockades have been a daily thing, as happened last March, when Mayor Maki Ortiz could not reach the celebration for the 272 years of the foundation of the city because criminals had crossed vehicles and placed caltrops on various avenues.

For years, in one of the main manufacturing and cross-border trade centers, classes have been suspended, shops close, people have equipped themselves in their homes: the streets become a cemetery.

And yet, nothing similar to what happened this Saturday had never happened: hitmen hunting people in the streets: murderers who go through four colonies killing at random, without anything happening: without being persecuted, arrested, judged.

The massacres are repeated. Violence in Mexico is out of control and the State is increasingly incapable of guaranteeing the security of citizens.

El Universal