Violence impacts Reynosa maquilas; gunmen attack oil firm

REYNOSA — The gunmen charged after midnight Friday, making off with uniforms and at least five trucks from the world’s largest oilfield services company.

It’s unclear if the attackers were from a drug cartel or how they even managed to bypass the security gate and guards at the Schlumberger Ltd. compound on the western outskirts of Reynosa. In a city wracked by drug violence, where many describe government control as illusory, information is scarce.

Until recently few criminals dared to touch the factories and offices of the hundreds of multinational corporations in Reynosa. Amid a violent three-way war among two cartels and the military, they are no longer untouched.

Cartels have commandeered cargo trucks loaded with goods and buses for factory workers to create impromptu roadblocks. Factories have canceled shifts on violent nights when they felt it was too unsafe for workers to leave home or when they couldn't catch the bus.

The upsurge in violence has impacted the bottom line, making some of Reynosa’s industrial giants wonder when enough will be enough, factory managers said.

“We’re at a tipping point. If something is not done, there’s going to be an impact to this (industry),” one factory manager said. “We’re pretty resourceful. We’ll go to other countries, or we’ll go back to the U.S.”

None of the 140 maquiladoras in Reynosa’s 11 industrial parks are pulling out of the area, managers said, but many have developed exit strategies in case the violence does not abate. For now, the majority of the manufacturers have barred non-essential travel to Mexico, and many of those factories’ vendors and suppliers now refuse to cross the border, according to managers and industry insiders.

“In the short term, they’re taking a wait-and-see approach,” said Keith Patridge, president and CEO of the McAllen Economic Development Corp., an organization that has aggressively recruited manufacturers to Reynosa for more than two decades. They’re engaged in “scenario planning: What happens if it gets worse?”

Maquila managers spoke about the difficulty of running a business amid the violence on the condition that their names not be used. Some of the city’s industrial parks are not secure and managers are afraid they will be killed if they talk.

On March 30, one manager encountered gunmen as they positioned trucks and buses into a roadblock along the highway, said several other managers as they recounted what has become a well-known tale. He made a U-turn, drawing the gunmen’s attention. They pointed firearms at him, but he persuaded them to let him go.

The incident, news of which circulated widely among the managers, reinforced a longstanding practice in Reynosa.

“(Cartels) pretty much leave the maquilas alone, predominately because they don’t want the people to turn against them,” one manager said. “Outside the drug gangs, we’re probably the largest employer.”

Manufacturers such as LG Electronics, Black & Decker, Motorola and Nokia employ more than 72,000 in a city with a population, on paper, of more than a half million, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography.

For years the drug gangs have left maquilas alone even as they subjected most other businesses in the city to extortion, managers and Reynosa businessmen have said. Last year, though, at least three companies were hit by hijackers who made off with truckloads of electronics.

Patridge flew the managers of those companies on a private jet to the Mexican city of Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas, to meet with the governor. The hijackings stopped.

“It was two-bit hustlers parading as cartel bad guys,” one manager said. “They were captured and put in jail.”

Few details are known about Friday’s attack at Schlumberger. A company spokesperson did not return phone calls Saturday and Mexican federal police officials could not be reached for comment.

An official in Mexico familiar with the incident said several gunmen attacked the facility and made off with at least half a dozen of the company’s pickup trucks. The vandals also stole company uniforms and tried to steal several of the company’s computers.

No casualties were reported. Whether the facility re-opened by Saturday was unclear, with some familiar with the situation saying it had temporarily closed, while others said it was open for business.

“We do not know them,” the official said of the armed attackers.

In late February, the Gulf Cartel and its former strongmen, the Zetas, began battling each other for control of the Gulf Cartel’s prized drug smuggling routes. Violence devastated Reynosa, a city that had long been relatively peaceful amid northern Mexico’s often violent border cities.

Jobita Mendo, a 42-year-old maquila worker laid off last year, said her friends who still work in the city’s factories sometimes can’t go home after their shifts on nights when the city’s colonias become battlegrounds.

“We don’t have any freedom to go where we want. We have to wait and see what hours are safe,” she said. “The bad guys fight with bad guys. They throw grenades … at 3 a.m. We hear them, and we hide under our beds.”

With laborers sometimes unable to get to work, absenteeism is up at some factories. Manufacturers, however, have not been impacted equally. Some managers painted dire pictures, while others compared violence-related production setbacks to a power out-age — something that was once routine in the burgeoning border town.

“I don’t want minimize it. … Sure, it’s bad for business, but it hasn’t specifically yet affected our operations,” one manager said, adding that the biggest hassle is assuring worried customers that they will receive their products. “It’s an added trouble for me to keep them in the loop and to help explain to them the reality.”

Armando Javier Zertuche Zuani, Reynosa’s secretary of economic development and employment, said that despite the absenteeism, production levels have remained steady. However, he acknowledged that if the violence does not abate, investment in the city could decline.

“I’m an optimist in this situation,” Zertuche said. “It’s not going to continue for much more time.”

Amid Reynosa’s virtual media blackout — the city’s newspapers generally don’t report cartel violence out of fear of reprisal — maquila managers spread news of shootings and roadblocks among themselves. Many managers have set up emergency plans for their workers, and some have even kept workers in the plants until a shootout has ended and buses could safely take them home.

For the hundreds of managers who cross the border daily, business continues and they hope their status as untouchables doesn’t change.

“People are really frightened, and we try to pretend like we’re not and go about our business and hope that it goes away soon,” one manager said. “We’re not seeing that happen yet.”

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Monitor reporter Ana Ley contributed to this story.

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Sean Gaffney covers McAllen, business, the economy and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4434. Jared Taylor covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4439.