Reynosa frustrated with lingering confusion

REYNOSA — A tense calm lingers in this border community.

While the Reynosa area has, for the most part, returned to normalcy in the past few days, people still whisper about anticipated cartel battles. Local media in Mexico have until recently kept mostly silent about recent drug violence that has killed at least 18 people across the border from the Rio Grande Valley. And ambiguous news releases from authorities give this community what little insight it can get on the recent violence that has rocked Reynosa, a city somewhat accustomed to bloodshed.

Reynosa Mayor Oscar Luebbert has promised to do a better job providing details about violence in the city. Last week, city leaders announced an attempt to quash rumors spread through the social networking site Twitter by creating a Twitter account of their own.

The Twitter feed, which is updated nearly every hour, generally dissuades residents from spreading unconfirmed information via Internet, occasionally assuring viewers in Spanish that city officials are “verifying information to serve you.”

No incidents of violence have been reported on the feed since the account was set up last week.

The city is also holding an exposition on the Mexican army and navy this weekend, inviting residents to learn more about the country’s armed forces, which have played a major role in President Felipe Calderon’s more than three-year offensive against his country’s entrenched criminal organizations. The event continues through Tuesday at the city’s Archivo Municipal.

Despite the efforts, residents continue to call for more transparency from their government. A Ciudad Camargo resident last week took a video of what appeared to be the aftermath of several violent shootings. The amateur video — apparently captured with a cell phone camera — was uploaded to YouTube on Feb. 28.

The woman narrates the video from the passenger side of a vehicle while a man drives along seemingly abandoned streets, past gnarled vehicles peppered with bullet holes. Spent cartridges litter the road, and soldiers are heard telling the woman to move along.

“This is nothing compared to what we are living every day in Ciudad Camargo, Tamps.,” she says in Spanish, criticizing Luebbert and Tamaulipas Gov. Eugenio Hernandez Flores. “They have said that it is calm and that nothing happens.”

Even local media in Mexico have commented on the mayor’s hesitancy to inform the public.

“The mayor just says nothing is happening here,” one reporter told The Monitor last week. “Nobody is giving information.”

Journalists in Reynosa say they have not reported news of cartel violence out of fear for their own safety.

Mexico remains one of the most dangerous nations in the world for journalists, who have sometimes faced fatal retribution there for their coverage of the cartels.

Luebbert said Reynosa’s residents are simply not used to receiving frequent updates.

People reading timely government bulletins dispelling rumors of violence during a period of relative calm — but which people only read later, in the midst of actual flare-ups — resulted in confusion, the mayor said.

“The dynamic in our country has forced us to give information in real time,” Luebbert said. “People get confused.”

A spokesperson for Gov. Hernandez could not be reached via telephone Thursday or Friday.

Adding to this city’s mounting unrest, a phony statement addressed to the governors of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon claims the Mexican army issued a curfew for this weekend at several cities in these neighboring states, including Camargo, Miguel Alemán, Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey and Reynosa.

The statement seems to allude to the army’s fight against the Zeta cartel, stating that the federal government implemented the curfew to “eradicate the criminal group called ‘Z.’”

The letter bears the signature of a Gen. Jorge Zermeño Arrichaga, an official whose existence appears questionable.

The Mexican Defense Ministry has denied having issued the statement, titled “Preventative statement R-7.”

“The hoax, whose origin remains unknown … is intended to mislead the society, create fear and uncertainty and prevent the population from conducting normal activities by restricting their individual security and smearing the Mexican army,” the ministry said in a statement.

Small crowds of schoolchildren and families slowly trickled in to the city’s army exposition Friday morning while Lt. Jose Alfredo Aguilar Contreras answered their questions about the military.

“With all this unrest, we wanted to give the children a peace of mind,” said Yesenia Gonzalez Diaz, a schoolteacher at Alvaro Calvez y Fuentes middle school, which serves children from low-income, rural areas. “I wanted them to understand the work the army does to keep us safe. … One only sees what’s (in the media) sometimes.”

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Monitor staff writer Martha Leticia Hernández 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.