SAN FERNANDO, Tamaulipas — Cartel smugglers used a Mexican federal healthcare truck in an attempt to move almost 600 pounds of cocaine. The smugglers hid the cocaine inside medical equipment while transporting it to the border city of Reynosa.
The smugglers tried to fool Mexican soldiers with a vehicle that is used to provide mobile imaging services. The Mexican soldiers arrested three employees with Mexico’s Federal Healthcare System (IMSS) who participated in a program to provide mobile medical services to poor people in remote areas as well as survivors of natural disasters.
The seizure and arrest took place along the federal highway that connects the Mexican city of San Luis Potosi with the city of Matamoros. Soldiers stopped the smugglers at a military checkpoint in the town of Las Norias in San Fernando, a rural municipality that is near several border communities.
The bricks of cocaine weighed 371 Kilos or close to 600 pounds. Smugglers hid the cocaine inside a mobile clinic that included an imaging device. The 371 bricks of cocaine had been stashed inside the several parts of the imaging equipment. Authorities arrested two nurses and a truck operator.
Smugglers moved the drug shipment from the Tamaulipas capital of Ciudad Victoria. The load was bound for the border city of Reynosa where cartel members would be tasked with transporting across the border into drugs into Texas. The criminal relation between Ciudad Victoria and Reynosa remains unclear since the state capital is dealing with a wave of violence as the Gulf Cartel and a faction of Los Zetas known as Vieja Escuela are fighting with the Los Zetas faction called Cartel Del Noreste (CDN). In a similar fashion, the Gulf Cartel is undergoing a similar split where two rival factions are fighting for control of the border city of Reynosa leading to a daily dose of executions.
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 “Francisco Morales” from Tamaulipas.