Mexican Gov’t Lists Border City Among ‘Most Violent’

MATAMOROS, Tamaulipas — Despite a tense sense of calm hovering over this border city, state officials with the new administration confirmed that the majority of the murders are tied to brutal cartel turf wars.

Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios Mojica confirmed to Breitbart Texas that Matamoros has been listed as one of the three most violent cities in the state and is the target of special attention from authorities.

A few months after having taken hold of the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office, Barrios revealed numbers that in previous years had been withheld by state officials who at the time were aligned with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). As Breitbart Texas has reported, the new state government run by members of the National Action Party (PAN) have been investigating corruption and links to organized crime of the previous administrations.

Breitbart Texas has investigated deeply into the cases of Tomas Yarrington and Eugenio Hernandez, two former governors of Tamaulipas from the PRI party who are considered fugitives of the U.S. Department of Justice on money laundering charges and for their ties to Mexican cartel members. While being fugitives, the previous PRI governor of Tamaulipas provided Yarrington and Hernandez with police officers as their personal bodyguards at the expense of the taxpayers. A former mayor of Matamoros and member of the PRI, Erick Silva Santos, is also considered a fugitive of the DOJ where he stands accused of laundering bribe money and buying properties with illicit funds.

Currently, the most violent cities are Ciudad Victoria, the state capital, followed by Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo. The cities of Reynosa and the metropolitan area of Tampico, Madero, and Altamira while still considered extremely violent, they did not make the top three list.

Barrios told Breitbart Texas that according to the newly released statistics since the new administration took office in October, there have been 152 murders of which 76 took place in October, 65 in November, and 11 in December.

According to the investigations, 80 percent of the murders have been linked directly to executions between cartel members who continue to have fierce battles for the control of drug distribution territories. The attorney general said that in the current environment, authorities will continue to place strict focus on the three cities using various federal and state agencies to fight the criminal element.

Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Nuevo León 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” de Matamoros, Tamaulipas and Breitbart Texas’ Ildefonso Ortiz.