Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas and Coahuila 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 various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas 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 “J.A. Espinoza” from Matamoros and Breitbart Texas’ Ildefonso Ortiz.
MATAMOROS, Tamaulipas — The attempts by government officials to coverup the activities of cartel members in this border city following the discovery of a clandestine gravesite near the border has stolen the hopes of dozens of families who cling to the hope of finding the remains of their kidnapped loved one–or at least get a definitive answer to what happened to them.
For more than five days the rural community known as Bartolina became the focus of attention following a large security detail by federal forces and agents with the state public ministry. Authorities had claimed to have been looking for evidence to determine if the rural area had been used for human extermination. However as Breitbart Texas reported, the Tamaulipas Government ended up disseminating a news release filled with contradictions that revealed either the incompetence or the complicity of the investigators who are not able to tell the difference between human and animal bones.
Initially upon hearing about the excavations and the gathering of bones at the rural area, relatives who had been searching for answers about the fate of their loved ones began to ask if their remains may be in that spot.
“I can not sleep, just by thinking about my sons because I made a life here with them,” said Maria de Jesus Garcia, a mother from Brownsville, Texas who clings to the hope of finding her two sons alive.
As Breitbart Texas previously reported, her sons Ernesto and Jesus Garcia, both U.S. Army veterans, are among the long list of people who were kidnapped in Matamoros in 2015.
Authorities in Texas keep an open investigation in Brownsville, however they are limited by jurisdictions and legalities. J.J. Trevino, the spokesman for Brownsville police stated that the case of the Garcia brothers will be kept open until they are able to recuperate the bodies of the veterans.
He claimed that while Brownsville and Matamoros are two close cities, they are in different countries and unable to interfere with each others investigations. Due to to the limitations, Texas authorities have to wait for Mexican authorities to provide forensic reports of any findings.
The mother of the two veterans said that the Mexican government has not done anything to bring her answers pushing her to carry out her own search.
The true scope of the issue of kidnapped and missing victims in Tamaulipas is made worse by the lack of complaints filed by relatives, as well as the current conditions of the justice system where people have lost faith in the government.
The Tamaulipas government in their attempts to minimize the facts in an effort to protect their image has not allowed for the gathering of precise figures that could provide a real statistical view of the terroristic actions carried out by the various cartels that are able to operate with complete impunity throughout the state.