Mexico Under Siege

BORDER CITY OF NUEVO LAREDO RELIVES NIGHTMARE OF VIOLENCE

Renewed Feuding Between Drug Gangs Spurs Old Fears Amid Dozens of Deaths

Residents of this scruffy border town thought they had seen the worst
of the violence five years ago, when rival drug gangs staged wild
gunfights in the streets and a new police chief was slain just hours
after being sworn in.

The warfare gave way to an uneasy calm after one of the warring
groups took de facto control. The number of deaths here ebbed, even
as violence soared out of control in other border cities, such as
Ciudad Juarez, about 500 miles to the northwest.

Now, like a recurring nightmare, dread again hangs over Nuevo Laredo
amid a new bloody feud that has ignited widespread fear of a return
to the earlier carnage.

Dozens of people have been killed along the border in recent weeks in
clashes between northeastern Mexico's most powerful gangs: the Gulf
cartel and onetime allies known as the Zetas. Both are based here in
Tamaulipas -- a pistol-shaped state that hugs the Texas border and
Gulf of Mexico.

Adding to the potential for skyrocketing violence, the Gulf cartel
has reportedly reached out for help against the Zetas by enlisting
the heavily armed trafficking group headed by Joaquin "El Chapo"
Guzman, based in the northwestern state of Sinaloa.

U.S. officials say they have yet to confirm the alliance, but take
the reports seriously. Such an alignment would reshuffle Mexico's
drug underworld and could produce prolonged and bitter warfare here.

"You'd hate to have that, where Sinaloa does reinforce Gulf or Gulf
is able to sustain itself in a way that this conflict between them
just keeps going on and on and escalating," said a senior U.S. law
enforcement official in Mexico City.

If so, Tamaulipas would be the latest battle zone along the
U.S.-Mexico border. In Ciudad Juarez, a turf war between the Sinaloa
group and a locally based cartel has left more than 4,000 people dead
since early 2008. Last weekend, gunmen in Juarez killed two U.S.
citizens -- a consular employee and her husband -- and a Mexican man
married to another staff member at the U.S. Consulate there.

Here in Tamaulipas, friction between the Gulf group and the
ultra-violent Zetas, which once served as its armed wing, erupted
into open fighting after a Zeta leader, Victor Perez Mendoza, was
slain in the border city of Reynosa in January, apparently by a
member of the Gulf group.

Violent jousting may also have been stoked by the closed-door
sentencing of the former leader of the Gulf cartel, Osiel Cardenas.
Cardenas was sentenced on drug and money-laundering convictions Feb.
24 in a U.S. federal court in Houston to 25 years in prison, a
surprisingly light sentence that has led many people to conclude that
he gave authorities information about his former colleagues.

In recent weeks, a broad triangle along the Texas border from Nuevo
Laredo east to the Gulf of Mexico and south into neighboring Nuevo
Leon state has seen hours-long shootouts, grenade attacks on police
stations and cases of gunmen commandeering cars from motorists to use
as roadblocks against foes.

Residents in the area of Matamoros and Reynosa, near the Gulf of
Mexico, have reported convoys carrying armed men and emblazoned with
the letters "CDG," the Spanish initials of the Gulf cartel. Banners
promising to extinguish the Zetas were signed by the "Cartels of
Mexico United Against the Zetas."

Officials and some analysts said the feud has the potential to draw
in even more Mexican trafficking groups, such as La Familia in the
western state of Michoacan.

Amid a spate of shootings in late February, the U.S. Consulate in the
northern industrial hub of Monterrey warned Americans to avoid
traveling to Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa. It has since advised against
traveling the main highways between Monterrey and those two cities.

In addition, the Texas Department of Public Safety has advised
college students not to venture into Mexican border cities over spring break.

In Nuevo Laredo, a major crossing for cargo trucks, the clashes have
revived frightening memories of the rampant killing that erupted when
the Sinaloa group made a push for control. During the worst of the
mayhem in 2005, gangs traded automatic weapons fire in the streets in
broad daylight.

The conflict turned Tamaulipas into a forerunner of the extreme
violence that has raked many spots around Mexico since President
Felipe Calderon launched his government's war against cartels in
December 2006. More than 18,000 people have since died in the
drug-fueled slaughter.

The relative calm in Tamaulipas since 2005 was attributed by
residents to an agreement that left it under the control of the Gulf
cartel and its Zeta allies, who have used extortion and kidnapped
businessmen and muzzled local reporters through threats.

Now, Nuevo Laredo is on edge again, a feeling expressed in lowered
voices, sentences that trail off and vague, fear-laced references to
"they" and "them."

"It is very easy to scare people who have lived for years under
threat from el narco," said Gustavo Rodriguez Vega, the Roman
Catholic bishop in Nuevo Laredo. "If someone says, 'They're coming,'
it scares everyone."

Residents say their plight is made worse by a lack of reliable
information. Local news organizations, which for years have censored
themselves for fear of angering drug bosses, are not reporting on the
recent violence, including shootouts that were widely witnessed.

"We can't publish anything," said one newspaper executive.

In Reynosa, about 125 miles to the southeast, two Mexico City-based
journalists were seized and beaten two weeks ago. At least five other
border-area journalists are missing, their colleagues say, and a
radio reporter died under suspicious circumstances. Authorities said
he succumbed to a diabetic coma, but colleagues say he was kidnapped
and tortured, according to Reporters Without Borders, a press advocacy group.

Tamaulipas residents have been barraged by terrifying rumors -- many
of them unfounded -- delivered via e-mail, text message, Twitter and Facebook.

Parents across Nuevo Laredo raced to take their children out of
school in late February after word went out of an impending gun
battle, a rumor that proved untrue. A separate report, also false,
said the city's mayor, Ramon Garza, had been assassinated.

Garza, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI,
which dominates the state, blamed the cascade of untruths on an
effort by organized crime or political opponents "to destabilize and
generate mistrust in the public" during an election year. "This was
manufactured," he said in an interview.

The Tamaulipas state government has added a breaking-news feature to
its website, listing incidents that are officially confirmed. But
many residents distrust what they see as spin control. They swap tips
by e-mail and watch anonymously posted YouTube videos showing the
aftermaths of recent shootouts: charred, bullet-riddled cars
abandoned next to carpets of spent bullet casings.

"Rumor, that's how everyone is getting information," said a Nuevo
Laredo restaurant owner, gazing over a room of empty tables at lunch
hour. He said customers have stopped coming amid the recent violence.

Nearby, machine gun-toting soldiers stood guard on the roof of a
funeral home where the bodies of four gunmen were said to be stored.
The troops appeared to be guarding against a possible raid by hit men
to seize comrades' bodies.

Some analysts say the latest clashes in northern Mexico may yet
amount to a relatively brief jostling for position in the aftermath
of the Cardenas sentencing.

Alberto Islas, a Mexico City-based security expert, compared the
feuding to a corporate boardroom tussle. He predicted that the Gulf
cartel and the Zetas would soon make amends and get back to the
lucrative business of smuggling drugs to a hungry U.S. market.

"Like businessmen, they are negotiating," Islas said. "Here they kill
people. That's the difference."