Bridge reopens after street gunfire in Nuevo Progreso

PROGRESO — The international bridge here was closed to southbound traffic Saturday afternoon after a shooting across the border.

George Garrett, homeland security director for Weslaco and Donna, said two Mexican soldiers are believed to have been injured or killed in what appears to be a cartel-related shooting. Their identities were not released.

A representative at the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey said the consulate had received unconfirmed reports of two fatalities. However, the consulate had received no notification of any American casualties as of about 6 p.m. Saturday.

A U.S. official not authorized to speak about the situation said authorities are investigating a pickup truck with Texas license plates believed to be linked to the shooting. The official said the truck’s occupant was killed, but investigators were still trying to determine whether the victim was a U.S. citizen, if he was the owner of the truck and whether the Texas license plates were stolen.

Nuevo Progreso police said the shooting broke out about 3 p.m. — at least one witness put the time closer to 2 p.m. — near the intersection of Juárez and California streets, several blocks from the international bridge along the city’s main strip.

Military personnel barricaded the site of the shooting for hours, even denying access to local police officers.

“They won’t let us in,” commander Alfredo Gomez said. “They won’t even let our ambulance in.”

Gomez said he and his men were told they couldn’t enter the crime scene for their own safety.

“That’s how they are,” Gomez said of the military personnel. “They don’t want us there.”

No other bridges were apparently closed in connection with the shooting, but a U.S. customs officer at the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge said supervisors told personnel put on bulletproof vests after the shooting. The Progreso bridge was reopened to southbound traffic about 5:30 p.m.

Dozens of Winter Texans gathered on the U.S. side of the bridge minutes after the shooting, some awaiting news from officials and others simply trying to get home.

Ron Watson, 62, of Saskatchewan, Canada, lives at the Trails-End Mobile Home Park in Weslaco when staying in the Rio Grande Valley. He and his wife were among a group of nine family and friends who were in Nuevo Progreso for the afternoon after planning to attend a welcome-back bash for Winter Texans but arriving too late for the festivities.

He was walking down the city’s main street with his wife and a friend when a woman on the street warned them there was gunfire in the direction they were going.

“We didn’t think much of it because it’s a festival day and they were thinking it’s firecrackers or something,” he said. “And even when we did hear the first automatic weapons, I was still thinking, ‘Well, that’s firecrackers.’ And then people started to run and get out of the way.”

Watson was a couple of shops ahead of his wife and the friend. He ducked into La Fogata restaurant and got on the floor, while his wife and the friend sought refuge at Canada Store.

“There was a lot of weapons fire,” he said. “There was some kind of concussion. I don’t know whether they used grenades or not. And the army guys were right in front of (La Fogata) where I was, shooting.

“I did see an injured man being carried out of a store across the street,” Watson said, noting blood was running down the man’s leg. Another person near Watson said the man appeared to be bleeding from his abdomen.

“There were two people carrying this guy with blood all over him, and then the army guys came up and made them put him down, and they were, I think, thinking that he was a bad guy or something,” Watson said. “But I think it appeared to be a bystander.”

Watson said the victim seemed to be alive at that time. The people attending to the injured man did not appear to be emergency medical responders and seemed to be trying to convince the soldiers, who had trained their weapons on the individual, that the man was not one of the gunmen.

“It was kind of surreal, because it was almost like watching a movie,” Watson said of the whole experience. “I don’t think it really hit me until afterwards: Wow.”

He and his wife have traveled in Mexico on numerous occasions, and Saturday’s experience hasn’t soured them on the country.

“No, it won’t deter us,” he said. “We like Mexico and Mexicans. I know there’s some problems on the border here, but mostly it’s alright and I don’t have a problem going back to Nuevo Progreso.”

One Winter Texan from Colorado who asked to remain anonymous said, however, that he was “thinking hard about coming back.”

“It surprised me,” he said. “I thought it was safe (in Nuevo Progreso).”

Carol Hamilton, of New York, said the shooting probably won’t dissuade her from making trips across the border.

“We’re not nervous or scared,” she said as she walked away from the bridge with her husband and friends. “We’ll be back.”

Hamilton said she was grateful to Nuevo Progreso’s tourism board for helping to get everyone to safety as shots were being fired.

“The people in Mexico, they treated us very well,” she said. “They were very apologetic.”

She was also grateful to the Mexican army.

“They called the shooters the ‘bad guys,’” she said, smiling. “It was cute.”

An ambulance as well as Progreso police, Hidalgo County sheriff’s deputies and U.S. Border Patrol agents were stationed just north of the U.S. side of the bridge following the shooting.

A “Welcome Back Winter Texans Fiesta” had been scheduled to take place in Nuevo Progreso from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday.

Soldiers patrolling the scene hours after the gunfire refused to provide details about the shooting, instead referring reporters to the 8th Military Zone in Reynosa. As of about 7:30 p.m., a soldier at the military base said no details were available to the media, adding that information would be released later through an online bulletin.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a sweeping crackdown on his country’s entrenched drug cartels in December 2006, dispatching thousands of soldiers to Mexico’s northern frontier. Some 14,000 people have been killed since the initiative began.

Many Nuevo Progreso businesses that cater largely to Winter Texans struggled over the summer while the snowbirds were up north and visitors who usually cross the border to frequent the city stayed away.

People in Nuevo Progreso placed most of the blame for the slump on a June 1 change to U.S. travel rules requiring that all U.S. citizens have a passport or PASS Card in hand to return to the country through a land port of entry.

Some also pointed fingers at the H1N1 flu pandemic and headlines about drug cartel violence along the Mexican border. However, Nuevo Progreso has largely maintained a reputation as safe haven amid more rough-and-tumble border towns like Ciudad Juárez, where drug violence has been notably more prevalent.

“We like the safety,” San Antonio resident Lucinda Gonzalez said in mid-September during a day trip to Nuevo Progreso with her aunts. “We’d rather come here than go to Nuevo Laredo.”

Several tourists who were crossing back from Nuevo Progreso on Saturday afternoon expressed concern for the shooting’s effect on the community’s economy.

“Some of the tourists were really shaken up — shaking, bawling,” said Leticia Zuniga, 49, of La Feria. “It ruined the whole festival.”

Zuniga’s boyfriend, 59-year-old Rudy Salinas, said the pair will likely continue visiting Nuevo Progreso regularly. The couple was celebrating Salinas’ birthday and buying Christmas presents Saturday before the shooting cut short their trip.

“This ain’t going to keep us away — it’s everywhere,” Salinas said. “When it’s time to die, you die.”

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Monitor staff writer Jared Taylor and deputy metro editor Marc B. Geller contributed to this report.

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Ana Ley covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. She can be reached at (956) 683-4428.