Bloody Reynosa: At least five killed in street battle

REYNOSA — A violent street battle between suspected gangsters and Mexican soldiers killed at least five people Tuesday morning as separate protests against the military presence shut down parts of the city for several hours. (Click here for pictures from Tuesday)

U.S. officials believe Hector Sauceda Gamboa, the suspected regional leader of the Gulf Cartel, was among the five gunmen Mexican authorities said were killed in the violence on the city's southwest side. (Click here for related story)

Mexican media accounts put the death toll as high as 20, with dozens more injured.

Sauceda, known as "El Karis," was shot during a fight with soldiers at his home in an affluent neighborhood behind the Plaza Real shopping center on Boulevard Hidalgo — one of the city's busiest streets, a U.S. federal official said.

Mexican officials would neither confirm nor deny he was killed, though the Mexican secretariat of public safety reported seven people had been detained. Authorities recovered a variety of weapons, including grenades, a 60 mm mortar and assorted small-arms ammunition.

The secretariat also reported seven federal police officers were injured — one of them seriously — during the fighting with gangsters armed with grenades and automatic rifles.

"We heard a lot of gunshots," screamed one child as he fled the Felipe Carrillo Puerto Primary School, holding his father's hand after the fighting had ended.

DISRUPTION

The shootout Tuesday coincided with an outbreak of protests along the border that shut down several international bridges for several hours in Reynosa, Ciudad Juarez and Nuevo Laredo. The demonstration snarled traffic throughout Reynosa, a city of more than 1 million. Officials said there was no connection between the protests and the violence.

"Right now, we are in the primary stages and we don't have any final count on bodies," Pedro Sosa Lopez, regional coordinator for the Tamaulipas State Police, said Tuesday afternoon a block from where two dead bodies lay in the street.

Near Sauceda's suspected home, U.S.-made bullet casings littered a corner adjacent to the Felipe Carrillo Puerto Primary School. Photographs in the city's afternoon newspapers showed children cowering under their desk during the street battle.

Dozens of people thronged nearby parking lots waiting to enter neighborhoods guarded by heavily armed and masked police early Tuesday afternoon.

Several abandoned vehicles could be seen along Boulevard Hidalgo. A blood-spattered SUV riddled with several bullet holes straddled the sidewalk near the entrance to a cemetery.

SPILLOVER WORRIES

On the U.S. side, federal and local authorities flooded the international crossings with heavily armed officers, fearing a spillover of the violence.

For the third time in the past month, hundreds of demonstrators thronged the entrances to the Pharr, Progreso and Hidalgo international bridges Tuesday morning, alleging abuses by the military and urging an end to an increase in vehicle import fees.

By 3 p.m., all the international crossings had reopened.

Maria Isabel Rodriguez, 32, held a sign that read "Afuera Soldados," or "Out Soldiers," as other protesters danced along to traditional Northern Mexican music and listened to speakers voice their disgust with the military presence.

"I don't really know what's going on," said Rodriguez, who added that she was just running some errands when someone put the sign in her young daughter's hands. "We are just standing here."

Matthew Cline, a Reynosa resident who works in the United States, said he was disgusted by the protesters. The military presence has made the city safer, and if residents do have grievances they should take them to the Mexican courts, he said.

"Should we support people that block off the bridges?" he added.

The Mexican government has said the Reynosa protests along with many other recent demonstrations across the country have been organized by the drug cartels. Human rights organizations have said the protesters' complaints are legitimate.

Last year, the Reynosa division of the Tamaulipas Human Rights Commission — which serves the region along the border from Miguel Alemán to Rio Bravo — received 956 informal complaints of abuses of power by law enforcement and government officials.

One taxi driver said other taxistas were told by the cartels to demonstrate at the bridges or risk losing their cars or their ability to operate.

"Everything has a price," the driver said. "If the military left ... I wouldn't be happy, but the cartel would."

UNREST MOUNTS

Mexican President Felipe Calderon deployed thousands of troops to Tamaulipas' northern border in early 2008 after two shootouts between cartel members and federal and local authorities in Reynosa and Rio Bravo. Two police officers and three suspected cartel members were killed in those battles in early January 2008.

Residents have sporadically protested the military presence for months, but few of those protests have affected life as directly as the recent demonstrations. The closures have had a temporary but far-reaching impact both socially and economically on both sides of the border.

The Gulf Cartel, along with its feared paramilitary enforcement wing, the Zetas, dominates the drug shipping routes in eastern Mexico along with trafficking in Reynosa. Unlike many other border towns that have been wracked by violence for more than a year, Reynosa has normally been quiet — a calm attributed to the Gulf Cartel's lack of competition in the region.

Sauceda, who U.S. officials said was killed Tuesday, is believed to have taken control of the cartel's Reynosa plaza in mid-November after the arrest of former strongman Jaime "El Hummer" Gonzalez Duran.

That arrest prompted a shootout at Reynosa's airport as suspected cartel gunmen tried to free Gonzalez from federal custody. No one was killed.

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Monitor reporter Jared Taylor and La Frontera reporter Martha L. Hernández contributed to this story.

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Sean Gaffney covers business, the economy and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4434. Ana Ley covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. She can be reached at (956) 683-4428. Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4437.