Gangland (23 page)

But it was the discovery of the assassins' training center that began the major exodus. Within a month, all but a few hundred of the town's 6,000 residents left. Those who remained were mostly elderly or for some reason unable to leave. “It's like we're in the Wild West,” Santos Moreno Pérez, a Pentecostal minister, told reporters just as he was to join about 300 other former Ciudad Mier residents in the nearby city of Miguel Alemán, on the Rio Grande. “We have no mayor, no police, no transit system. We have been left to fend for ourselves.”

Mexico: The new Colombia?

That week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton angered many Mexicans by stating that their country was “looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago.” Her comment drew support from Oscar Naranjo Trujillo, director of Colombia's national police and a four-star general who had spent his professional career fighting the cartels in his country. “They are headed there,” he said.

The Mexicans disagreed. Alejandro Poiré Romero, chief spokesman on national security matters for the Calderón government, pointed out that Mexico's murder rate was still lower than Colombia's, and that the Mexicans were fighting a war against the cartels before they infiltrated the government to the extent they had in Colombia. He did not mention that 22 journalists had been killed in Mexico since Calderón had taken office, as compared to one in Colombia over the same period.

Obama went into damage control on Clinton's behalf the next day. He gave an interview to
La Opinion
, a Spanish-language newspaper in Los Angeles and stated: “Mexico is a vast and progressive democracy, with a growing economy, and as a result you cannot compare what is happening in Mexico with what happened in Colombia 20 years ago.” Unlike other interviews with the president, the White House did not publish an English transcript of the discussion with
La Opinion
.

The day after Obama spoke, Juárez responded. Long the most violent of Mexican cities, the murder rate had gone down from 12 per day before the military had taken control of the streets and had stabilized at about six per day. But on September 9, 25 people were killed in drug-related violence. At least four of them—two women and two men—were killed because they had witnessed another killing. At the sites of four separate attacks there were painted messages, all threatening the Sinaloa Cartel and El Chapo in particular. All of them were signed
El Diego
, which was the nickname for José Antonio Acosta Hernández, second in command of La Linea, the Juárez Cartel's enforcer unit. As police were investigating a murder in which the body was left in a car, they found a bomb in a nearby vehicle. It had failed to detonate.

Focus shifted farther down the Rio Grande on 11 when news broke that 85 inmates at the
Centro de Ejecución de Sanciones
(Sanctions Enforcement Center) in Reynosa escaped in a pre-dawn operation. Videotapes showed that a number of trucks drove down the long road—Calle Miguel Hidalgo—to the prison, which is surrounded by low scrub strewn with garbage, abandoned auto parts and piles of used tires, and stopped outside the concrete walls. Ladders being transported in the trucks were heaved over the prison walls. Inmates then climbed the ladders, got into the trucks and were transported to downtown Reynosa, where they mixed with the general public. There was no indication that anybody tried to stop them.

At 7:00 a.m., Federales arrested Warden Guadalupe Reyes Ortega, along with 43 other prison employees, including maintenance and nursing staff. The prison had been designed for 1,400 inmates, but was holding around 1,700. Tamaulipas Public Security Minister Antonio Garza García—who had assumed his position earlier that week—accused the Gulf Cartel of the breakout, pointing out that they needed reinforcements (he called them “thugs”) in their fight against Los Zetas. “The guards evidently helped in the escape,” he said. A riot in the same prison in December 2008 had left 21 inmates dead and another 34 injured.

By the time of the prison break, Reynosa had changed. It had once had a reputation as a friendly, easygoing city, but in the summer of 2010, it was rare to see anyone other than soldiers on the streets anywhere near sundown. “It's not officially declared a war, but we are in a war zone,” stated Eliacib Leija Garza, state organizer of Tamaulipas for PAN. “Most of the people stay home after six, eight at night. Just don't go out; you take your precautions, because once in a while you hear a bunch of shootings and things like that.” He also told a reporter that because of the violence, the mayor and most officials had moved to Texas. “And not only city and official people,” said Leija Garza. “Investors—people who have businesses from Tampico, Matamoros, Reynosa, Laredo—are going to the U.S. because of this insecurity.”

Trouble at Falcon Lake

The anarchic state of northeast Mexico started leaking over the border a few miles up the Rio Grande from Reynosa. In 1953, the two countries built Falcon Dam on the Rio Grande, which provided a reliable source of water for drinking, irrigation and hydroelectricity for the area. The resulting pool—known officially as Falcon International Reservoir, but commonly as Falcon Lake—was a very popular recreation spot and is regularly stocked with sport fish by the Texas government. It is also world-renowned for its birdwatching, with sizable colonies of rare species like the red-bellied woodpecker and black-chinned hummingbird.

Fierce territory wars between the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas (as well as incursions by other groups, including the Sinaloa Cartel) had forced some of Los Zetas and their associates to seek refuge in and around Antigua Guerrero, the old part of Nueva Guerrero, a city on the shores of Falcon Lake. There were frequent reports—although more through social media and rumor than mainstream media—that members of Los Zetas were operating small boats and robbing people on the Mexican side of the lake. The mayor of Nueva Guerrero, Olga Juliana Elizondo Guerra, told
The Washington Post
that people on her side had frequently been harassed on their land, boats and vehicles had been stolen and tourists had stopped coming. “We hope this ends soon,” she added.

On April 30, five Americans in two bass boats were fishing just outside the partially submerged Old Guerrero Church. It's known as a great spot for bass and is on the Mexican side of the border. They were approached by four “heavily tattooed” men with guns who boarded their boats, demanding money and drugs. The Americans rounded up about $200 in cash and gave it to the Mexicans. The armed men then returned to their boats and followed the retreating fishermen, breaking off their pursuit when it was obvious they were in U.S. waters.

After that, stories of Falcon Lake pirates—often claiming to be Federales, but identified as members of Los Zetas by the “Z” tattoos on their necks and arms—began to surface more frequently. On May 6, three Americans fishing just north of a small island on the Mexican side of the lake were approached by two men with AR-15s who claimed they were Federales and that they had to search the boat for drugs and weapons; finding none, one of the men threatened to shoot them if they did not pay. They made off with about $400. Two days later, San Antonio dentist Richard Drake was approached by men he believes were pirates. “I turned and looked over my shoulder,” he said. “Three guys in a bass boat with machine guns waving and yelling at me: ‘Pull over! Pull over!' ” He didn't. Instead, he outran them to the U.S. side.

By the Memorial Day Holiday at the end of May, four more armed robberies had been reported from the lake. One fisherman noted that the pirates had taken the memory disk from his digital camera in case it contained any incriminating evidence. The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) issued an alert telling Americans to look out for any boats with large prows, small outboard motors with the cover removed and hulls with no identification numbers. A Border Patrol boat had encountered one such boat filled with masked men and gave chase, but it proved too fast and made it safely back into Mexican waters.

Normally, Memorial Day draws 200 or more bass boats and tens of thousands of visitors to the lake. But in 2010, there were only about two dozen boats. Dwayne Deets, a Houston-based fisherman whose electronics-laden bass boat is worth about $50,000, spoke with reporters about how he was avoiding the Mexican side of the lake even though everyone knew that's where the bigger fish were. “We've all heard about the pirates, and we're all sticking to the American side of the lake, because those are some bad boys out there,” he said, pointing out that firearms are legal for fishermen to carry on the U.S. side, but not on the Mexican side. “I just pray no one gets killed out there.”

Tom Bendele, owner of Falcon Lake Tackle, took American reporters on a tour of the lake, include Salado Cove, near the island where the May 6 incident took place. “Until this started, we fished everywhere, and we never cared about the border, Texas to Mexico. But now? No. Hardly anybody is fishing the Mexico side of the lake,” he said. He pointed out how parts of Mexico are just swimming distance from Texas and that Mexicans often use nets (which are illegal on the lake) to catch large quantities of fish to sell. “You could see how it would be easy to get jumped in here,” he added. “Notice you don't see any Americans?”

Though precautions were taken, incidents of piracy—always following a similar script—continued. Another Border Patrol vessel encountered a boat that fit the DPS's description on August 31. Ominously, it had the words “game warden” on it. It was misspelled, and the letters were made of duct tape. That boat also fled to Mexico before it could be intercepted.

Local fear turned to national hysteria on September 30 when 29-year-old Tiffany Hartley of McAllen, Texas, told a story that everyone found shocking and more than a few found incredible. She and her 30-year-old husband, David Hartley, had been riding their personal watercrafts (although the media has referred to them as “Jets Skis,” a brand from Kawasaki, they couple were actually riding Bombardier Sea-Doos) on the Mexican side of the lake to take photos of the Old Guerrero Church. They were planning on moving to Tiffany's hometown in Colorado and wanted to have some souvenirs of their time in Texas. At about 2:30 in the afternoon, the couple had finished shooting and decided to head back. “When we were coming out, we saw them,” she said in a nationally televised interview. “They just waved at us, like we were—you know, friendly, very friendly wave. We were on our way—so we just continued, took a few more pictures, continued out. And we were, I don't know, maybe halfway to the U.S. I can't really give you a great idea of where exactly.”

When the three boats began to approach them, Tiffany said the American couple decided to head back to Texas. As they gathered speed, Tiffany said she heard gunfire, seeing the impact of at least two shots hit the water to her left. She then said she looked back to check on David only to see him face down in the water. “And I, of course, no questions asked, not even thinking, just went right back to him to make sure and check and see, check on him to make sure he was okay,” Tiffany said. “When I flipped him over, he was shot in the head.” She actually had to go past her pursuers to get to him.

She said that she then attempted to lift his body onto her Sea Doo, but couldn't because he was “so much bigger” than she was. Tiffany is a thin 4-foot-10 and David weighed about 250 pounds. As the men in the boats approached her with weapons aimed at her, she said she gave up the struggle and raced past them, back to Texas as quickly as she could and called 911 from a nearby payphone.

An eyewitness came forward and said he saw Tiffany return, but did not see the gunmen or hear any shots. “I saw the ‘Jet Ski' come around an island,” he told ABC News. “There was something wrong actually. The way I saw her come around it looked like something terribly wrong happened. I mean, she was jittery, frantic. ... She was crying, sobbing.”

Although the pirates had been known locally for some time, the death of David Hartley made them international news and Tiffany made the media rounds calling for a complete investigation and for both governments to work harder to make the border safer. And experts weighed in as well. “Piracy on Falcon Lake is an incredible story, especially when Somali piracy has been so much in the news,” said Robert Chesney, a national security and terrorism expert at the University of Texas School of Law. “It's amazing to think that it's actually happening on the Texas border.”

Divers searched the American section of the lake and found no evidence. Mexico launched its own investigation, which the Hartley family criticized as insufficient. A spokesman for the state of Tamaulipas pointed out that Tiffany had yet to file a complaint in Mexico, and she had produced no evidence aside from her word.

After no physical evidence was found by either side, doubts of the veracity of Tiffany's claims began to emerge on both sides of the border. Marco Antonio Guerrero Carrixales, Tamaulipas district attorney, told
The McAllen
Monitor that he was not sure events unfolded as Tiffany claimed. Rumors in the towns around Falcon Lake focused on the idea that Tiffany murdered her husband and concocted the story to clear her name. “It certainly feels better to imagine that a young good-looking married couple was blissfully in love, and that they were simply having fun in the sun when dark forces struck,” Wendy Murphy, a law professor at New England Law/Boston and author of
And Justice for Some
told Fox News. “But let's remember the Scott Peterson and Charles Stuart cases. Two men seemingly head-over-heels in love with their beautiful pregnant wives when they claimed an unknown killer ruined their picture-perfect lives.”

The congressman for her area, Democrat Aaron Peña, leapt to Tiffany's defence. He called Guerrero Carrixales' comments “a convenient excuse for the sorry response” by his investigators. “Everything tells me that she's being truthful,” said Peña. “There was a witness, its fits with other criminal activity seen in the area, and how do you make assumptions without having evidence, and the only evidence is what she's saying.” Her biggest supporter has been David's family, particularly his sister, Nikki Hartley, who has been outspoken in Tiffany's defence through the media.