REYNOSA, Tamaulipas — Mexico’s Gulf Cartel has hung two men described as thieves and highway robbers next to a banner where the criminal organization claims to not be behind their crimes.
After days of multiple highway robberies, the criminal organization known as the Gulf Cartel has sought to distance itself from a series of violent crimes including highway robberies, extortion, and kidnappings.
On Tuesday morning, gunmen from the Gulf Cartel hung two men and a banner from a bridge in one of this city’s most traveled highways. The two men had not been killed but were beaten. The banner was signed by Comandante Toro, the leader of the Reynosa faction of the Gulf Cartel, where he claimed to not be behind the rash of crime that has been affecting the city:
To all citizens, the government and social media, I am tired that for everything that happens, I or the company gets blamed. That if they rob, that if they kidnap, everything gets blamed on myself or the company–and we are fed up that we are singled out as the guilty ones. Our job is a different one and as proof, I present to you the rats that hid behind us while they robbed and kidnapped. Every robbing and kidnapping rat that we find will be turned over. We want a city in peace, that is why we removed gunmen from the streets, we want to prove it to authorities these rats are not part of our company.
The men had been beaten before they were hung from the bridge using duct tape. One of the men sustained more injuries when he fell nearly 12 feet while authorities were trying to lower him.
The display by the leader of the criminal organization comes just days after travelers from cities such as Monterrey, Nuevo Leon and its surrounding suburbs have taken to social media to warn others about gunmen carrying out brazen highway robberies near the city. The tourists point to an almost complete lack of patrolling by Mexican federal authorities, particularly in the outskirts of Reynosa where the robberies and the kidnappings have taken place.
The alarm that the messages created led to the McAllen Economic Development Corporation and an association of manufacturing plants in Reynosa to post on their Facebook pages a message from Mexican Federal Police officers where they claim that they have stepped up their patrolling along the highway to ensure public safety.
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 “A.C. Del Angel” from Reynosa, Tamaulipas.