More than a dozen dead in recent Mexico battles

REYNOSA — More than a dozen people have been slain in gun battles across the border from the Rio Grande Valley since Sunday night, U.S. and Mexican officials said Tuesday.

At least eight people were killed in a Monday night gun battle in Reynosa and four more people were found dead in Miguel Alemán on Tuesday, the officials said. The dozen slayings came after a civilian was killed Sunday night, caught in the crossfire between suspected cartel members and the Mexican army outside a Matamoros shopping center.

Los Zetas, once the armed enforcement wing of the Gulf Cartel, are rumored to be staging a coup for control of the Reynosa plaza, one of the busiest and most important transport routes for drugs bound for the United States, federal officials said.

The violence erupted amid rumors that Reynosa Mayor Oscar Luebbert Gutierrez had been kidnapped and assassinated Tuesday morning. Luebbert quashed the rumors in a telephone interview from City Hall that afternoon.

“This is part of how the federal government is fighting organized crime in our country — they have reinforced their presence here on the Tamaulipas border,” he said. “Unfortunately, this has worried the population.”

Nuevo Laredo Mayor Ramón Garza Barrios was also falsely reported kidnapped Tuesday morning, according to the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior.

In Miguel Alemán, across the Rio Grande from Roma, at least four people were found dead Tuesday morning as the rumor of a violent Zeta takeover emptied city streets, shuttered schools and closed shops for the day, Roma city officials said. The normally bustling bridge connecting the two cities was virtually empty late Tuesday afternoon.

Rumors and confirmed reports of street violence spanned most cities just across the border from the Valley — from Matamoros to Ciudad Mier, across the border from Zapata County.

Luebbert said at least three violent gun battles in less than three weeks have left several casualties. Mexican law enforcement has denied the recent skirmishes, last confirming a Feb. 8 battle between the army and cartel hit men that included the use of grenades and left six dead.

Other Mexican authorities said the death toll from the Monday night shootout was eight. An official with the Mexican Attorney General’s Office said federal agents requested a team to watch over the Reynosa morgue after the incident.

“The officers have to know how many bodies are there, and they said that there were eight bodies with gunshot wounds,” the official said.

For at least the past two weeks, rumors, some well-founded and others false, have stoked fear among many in the state of Tamaulipas that the Gulf Cartel's normally quiet dominion was growing increasingly violent.

The fear has been spread through mass e-mails and on social networking sites like Twitter, where Reynosa’s residents have uploaded photos and videos to share reports of the growing surge in violence across the city. Reynosa's local media almost never report on the gun battles.

Speaking at a meeting of the South Texas Manufacturers Association on Tuesday, Will Glaspy, who heads the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s McAllen office, acknowledged the rumors but said many have been untrue.

At one point last week, rumors circulated of two shootouts with civilian death tolls as high as 100. Another rumor held that the cartels had shot down a Mexican military helicopter, and yet another had the military surrounding a grade school. Glaspy said as far as he could tell, they were all untrue.

“Last week was rather disturbing to a lot of people,” he said.

Luebbert, however, said his city's people are panicking after a Mexican navy raid Thursday in which about 500 sailors surrounded an area near two of Reynosa’s biggest schools. Each has more than 2,000 students.

The naval commandos were reportedly pursuing Miguel “Zeta 40” Treviño Morales, second-in-command of the Zetas who oversaw the operations of the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas — collectively known as “The Company” — in Veracruz and Nuevo Laredo.

“The navy had an ongoing operation,” the mayor said. “There was a helicopter flying over the area. … They deployed sailors on top of the school.”

“Just imagine that you get to your neighborhood and it is surrounded by navy sailors, and you see sailors on top of your house’s roof and helicopters flying the area. You would get nervous.”

The naval commandos failed to capture Treviño, who remains on the run.

The hysteria shut down much of Reynosa on Thursday, when schools dismissed early and businesses closed their doors across the city. On Saturday, banners were found hanging from pedestrian bridges across Reynosa stating in Spanish that the city is safe and assuring residents that “nothing is happening and nothing will happen.

“Continue your life as normal,” continued the message, which ended with the initials CDG — the call sign of the Cartel del Golfo, or Gulf Cartel.

The DEA’s Glaspy acknowledged that fears of a split between the Zetas and Gulf Cartel have fueled much of the speculation of growing violence and have even prompted U.S. law enforcement to beef up security at border crossings in case a running gun battle were to spill onto U.S. soil.

“Some of the reports had talked about this growing split, and that had a lot of people in Reynosa nervous,” he said.

Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño, after receiving word Tuesday from federal authorities of possible violence from Rio Bravo to Ciudad Mier, west of Miguel Alemán, activated his agency's three SWAT teams and put his deputies on high alert, should assistance be needed at the border, he said. The move was at least the second time in less than a week that the sheriff has activated his deputies to prepare for violence spilling north across the Rio Grande.

Authorities in Starr County made similar moves Tuesday afternoon, with Roma police officers and Starr County sheriff's SWAT deputies standing guard beside U.S. customs officers at the Roma bridge.

“We have a plan of action,” Starr County Sheriff Rene Fuentes said. “We don’t foresee any spillover, but in case we do, we’ll be ready.”

In Roma, the nervousness has led to a dramatic decline in the number of people crossing the bridge, said Jose Gonzalez, who manages the U.S side of the border crossing.

“We didn’t have no traffic at all,” he said Tuesday. “It’s been slow, but not like today.

“It's been one of the worst days.”

Hidalgo Police Chief Vernon Rosser said some local law enforcement officials are worried by the lack of information they are receiving from authorities on the Mexican side.

“I’m getting as much information from the (U.S.) media as I am from (Mexican officials),” Rosser said. “People are coming out of Mexico with rumors, but we don’t know what’s true.”

Rosser said his department has been unable to reach Mexican officials — their cell phones appear to be disconnected or simply turned off.

“I don’t know if they’re trying to black out all this scuttlebutt,” Rosser said.

Most of the violence remains between Mexican authorities and the cartels — not cartel-on-cartel violence or cartels targeting innocent civilians, the DEA’s Glaspy said.

“For the most part, across from us we see very little of innocent civilians being caught up in some type of violent activity,” he said. “It does happen, but it happens significantly less (than in other areas).”

But at the same time, the Gulf Cartel and Zetas’ knowledge of activity in Mexican cities that border the Valley is “second to none,” Glaspy said.

“They have our consulate — and I’m sure others — under constant surveillance,” he said. “They know when some of our people come across the border. They know who they are going to meet with. They are uniquely tuned in to what's going on.”

The widespread hysteria and reports of street violence came as the U.S. State Department renewed its travel alert for citizens visiting Mexico.

The bulletin specifically named Reynosa, Matamoros and Monterrey along with several other border cities where U.S. citizens should travel with heightened awareness of “large firefights.”

“The situation in northern Mexico remains fluid,” the alert states. “The location and timing of future armed engagements cannot be predicted.”

____

Monitor staff writer Ana Ley contributed to this report.

____

Jared Taylor, Martha L. Hernandez and Sean Gaffney are reporters for The Monitor. You can reach them at (956) 683-4400.