Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the Gulf Cartel if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by Reynosa’s “AC Del Angel.”
REYNOSA, Tamaulipas – The non-stop cartel violence in this border city has led to death squads scouring the area looking for their targets. Their victims will likely face a slow and torturous death or if they are lucky a quick execution in front of their families.
While in other parts of the world groups of cartel members kidnapping and executing individuals would be a major story, on the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros the practice of the “levanton” or the quick grab has become a daily occurrence that is never reported on the local news outlets
The nightmare took place earlier last month, on a late Sunday night in the residential neighborhood called Jardines Del Pedregal or Stony Gardens. At night the streets in this city are deserted since the violence ended any resemblance of a night life years ago. The silence of what had been a quiet night ended when an all too familiar scene took place.
A commando or armed cartel hitmen arrived at a private residence near the intersections of Paseo Colinas and Almendro Streets where they loudly banged on the door and then began to break it down.
The person the gunmen had been looking for had been nearby in a small plaza walking with a relative and when he got home the gunmen held him and the relative at gunpoint.
Screaming, pleading and scuffling woke up the neighbors who didn’t intervene upon seeing what was happening. The silent neighbors watch firsthand a “levanton” which has become even more common in the modern times of narco-violence. Becoming a silent witness is the only way to avoid being yet another victim.
The neighbors are able to see the victim’s wife and daughter run out of the house pleading with the gunmen to let their victims go. Suddenly the victim scuffles with the gunmen and makes a run for it getting into his truck to flee but he wasn’t able to start the vehicle in time. He is executed on the spot with nine shots that ended his existence.
The gunmen take the body down from the truck and drag it in one of their vehicles; they take the body and the man’s truck. The rest of the family was not hurt, but they fled from their home seeking refuge with their neighbors.
The following morning, the victim’s wife began the tortuous task for trying to locate her husband’s body by going to various courts and agencies to no avail. Days later the family received a phone call where someone told them to stop searching, they would not get the body back and that it would be best for the rest of the family to leave the city.
The house is now empty, but the story lives on thanks to the silent witnesses of that tragic night who have told the story of yet another of the many unknown victims that have disappeared during the past five years of narco-warfare. Some of the victims have criminal ties, others are completely innocent, their families have been torn apart and forced to migrate to other areas in a mass migration that will never be part of any official figures in a state where institutional information blackouts are common and even the norm.
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