Family
of
Ricardo
Valdes,
who
disappeared
on the
road on
May 25,
put up
posters
with
their
photography
during a
protest
in
Monterrey,
Nuevo
Leon
state,
Mexico,
Thursday,
June 24,
2021. As
many as
50
people
in
Mexico
are
missing
after
they set
off on
simple
highway
trips
between
the
industrial
hub of
Monterrey
and the
border
city of
Nuevo
Laredo;
relatives
say they
simply
disappeared
on the
heavily
traveled
road,
which
has been
dubbed
'the
highway
of
death,'
never to
be seen
again.
(AP
Photo/Roberto
Martinez) |
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Police
guard
the
highway
leading
to
ViIlla
Union,
Mexico,
Sunday,
Dec. 1,
2019,
the day
after it
was
assaulted
by
gunmen.
Mexican
security
forces
on
Sunday
killed
seven
more
members
of a
presumed
cartel
assault
force
that
arrived
in a
convoy
of
pickup
trucks
and
attacked
the
town’s
city
hall on
Saturday,
putting
the
overall
death
toll at
20. (AP
Photo/Gerardo
Sanchez) |
|
Disappearances
rise on
Mexico's
'highway
of
death'
to
border
By MARK
STEVENSON
apnews.com
MEXICO
CITY -
As many
as 50
people
are
missing
after
setting
out on
three-hour
car
trips
this
year
between
Mexico’s
industrial
hub of
Monterrey
and the
border
city of
Nuevo
Laredo
on a
well-traveled
stretch
of road
local
media
have
dubbed
“the
highway
of
death.”
Relatives
say
family
members
simply
vanished.
The
disappearances,
and last
week’s
shooting
of 15
apparently
innocent
bystanders
in
Reynosa,
suggest
Mexico
is
returning
to the
dark
days of
the
2006-2012
drug war
when
cartel
gunmen
often
targeted
the
general
public
as well
as one
another.
“It’s no
longer
between
the
cartels;
they are
attacking
the
public,”
said
activist
Angelica
Orozco.
As many
as half
a dozen
of those
who
disappeared
on the
highway
are
believed
to be
U.S.
citizens
or
residents,
though
the U.S.
Embassy
could
not
confirm
their
status.
One,
José de
Jesús
Gómez
from
Irving,
Texas,
reportedly
disappeared
on the
highway
on June
3.
On
Saturday,
the FBI
office
in San
Antonio,
Texas,
issued a
bulletin
seeking
information
on the
disappearance
of a
Laredo,
Texas,
woman,
Gladys
Perez
Sánchez,
and her
16-year-old
son and
9-year-old
daughter,
who were
last
seen
setting
out on
the
highway
June 13.
They had
visited
relatives
in
Sabinas
Hidalgo,
a town
on the
highway,
and were
returning
to Texas
when
they
vanished.
Most of
the
victims
are
believed
to have
disappeared
approaching
or
leaving
the
cartel-dominated
city of
Nuevo
Laredo,
across
the
border
from
Laredo,
Texas.
About a
half-dozen
men have
reappeared
alive,
badly
beaten,
and all
they
will say
is that
armed
men
forced
them to
stop on
the
highway
and took
their
vehicles.
What
happened
to the
rest
remains
a
mystery.
Most
were
residents
of Nuevo
Leon
state,
where
Monterrey
is
located.
Desperate
for
answers,
relatives
of the
missing
took to
the
streets
in
Monterrey
on
Thursday
to
protest,
demanding
answers.
Orozco,
a member
of the
civic
group
United
Forces
for Our
Disappeared,
said the
abductions
seem to
mark a
return
to the
worst
days of
Mexico’s
drug
war,
like in
2011
when
cartel
gunmen
in the
neighboring
state of
Tamaulipas
dragged
innocent
passengers
off
buses
and
forced
them to
fight
each
other to
the
death
with
sledgehammers.
Then, as
now,
politicians
and
prosecutors
have
given
the
families
of the
disappeared
few
answers.
“Now,
more
than 10
years
after
the
disappearances
in 2010
and
2011,
they
cannot
continue
to use
the same
pretexts,”
said
Orozco.
But
“they’re
using
the same
lines. …
In the
last
decade
they
were
supposed
to have
created
institutions
and
procedures,
but it’s
the same
old
story of
authorities
doing
nothing.”
United
Forces
for Our
Disappeared
sent out
a press
statement
on May
19
warning
people
about
the
dangers
on the
Monterrey-Nuevo
Laredo
highway,
even
though
by
mid-May
the
group
had
received
only
about 10
reports
of
people
disappearing
there.
More
reports
poured
in in
June,
and now
amount
to about
50.
The
government
of Nuevo
Leon
state
acknowledged
10 days
later
that it
had
received
reports
of 14
people
who had
disappeared
on the
highway
so far
in 2021,
along
with
five
more in
neighboring
Tamaulipas,
where
Nuevo
Laredo
is
located.
But
Nuevo
Leon
didn’t
warn
people
against
traveling
on the
highway
until
almost a
month
later on
June 23.
That was
too late
for
Gómez,
and for
Javier
Toto
Cagal, a
36-year-old
truck
driver
and
father
of five
who
disappeared
along
with
three
employees
of the
same
trucking
company
on the
135-mile
(220 km)
stretch
of
highway
on June
3. They
were
driving
to Nuevo
Laredo
in a
car.
“Up to
now, we
don’t
know
anything
about
(what
happened
to)
them,”
said
Erma
Fiscal
Jara,
Toto
Cagal’s
wife.
“It
wasn’t
until
June 5
that the
company
called
me to
say
‘your
husband
has
disappeared.’
As far
as the
authorities,
I ask
and they
say ‘we
don’t
know
anything.’”
Even
after
acknowledging
the
abductions,
the
Nuevo
Leon
state
government
suggested
it was
Tamaulipas’
problem.
The
Nuevo
Leon
government
also
gave
confusing
information,
first
claiming
to have
rescued
17
people
after
abductions
on the
highway,
then
later
acknowledging
those
victims
had made
it home
on their
own.
It
wasn’t
until
Friday
that
both
state
governments
announced
a joint
program
to
increase
policing
and
security
on the
highway,
a step
that, if
it had
been
carried
out a
month
earlier,
might
have
saved
dozens
of
lives.
“Only
now is
the
National
Guard
going
out to
patrol
the
highway.
Why did
they
wait so
long?”
asked
Karla
Moreno,
whose
husband,
truck
driver
Artemio
Moreno,
disappeared
on the
road
April
13.
She,
too, is
horrified
that
northern
Mexico
is
reliving
the
experiences
of a
decade
ago.
“How can
this be
happening?
We were
supposed
to have
more
(law
enforcement)
resources
by now,”
she
said.
Nuevo
Laredo
has long
been
dominated
by the
Northeast
Cartel,
a
remnant
of the
old
Zetas
cartel,
whose
members
were
infamous
for
their
violence.
Mexico
security
analyst
Alejandro
Hope
said the
highway
disappearances
and the
June 19
events
in
Reynosa
— when
gunmen
from
rival
cartels
drove
through
the
streets,
randomly
killing
15
passersby
— were
reminiscent
of the
attacks
on
civilians
during
the
2006-2012
drug
war.
In 2008,
a drug
cartel
in the
western
city of
Morelia
tossed
hand
grenades
into a
crowd
during
an
Independence
Day
celebration.
In 2011,
cartel
gunmen
in
Tamaulipas
abducted
dozens
of men
from
passenger
buses
and made
them
fight
each
other to
the
death,
either
as a
recruitment
tool or
for
entertainment.
“It is
something
that
happens
episodically;
it never
completely
stopped,”
Hope
said of
the
attacks
on
civilians.
The only
thing
that has
changed,
Hope
said,
was the
rhetoric.
Officials
in the
early
2000s
were
often
quick to
repeat
an old
belief
that
drug
cartels
only
killed
each
other,
not
innocent
civilians.
This
time
around,
both in
the
Reynosa
killings
and
highway
abductions,
officials
quickly
acknowledged
the
victims
appeared
to be
innocent
civilians.
“That
argument,
that
‘they
only
kill
each
other’
isn’t
heard so
much
anymore,”
Hope
said.
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