Legacy news outlets in the U.S. generally ignored daily cartel violence in Mexican border cities until the FBI confirmed that four recent victims were Americans, said Breitbart Texas’ Ildefonso Ortiz in an interview on Milenio Noon Newscast with Carlos Zuniga.
“Shootouts in Mexican border cities like Matamoros, Reynosa, and Nuevo Laredo are relatively common,” Ortiz said. “And it is something that in the U.S. rarely gets any news coverage. It wasn’t until the FBI confirmed that there were four U.S. citizens missing that the case got stirred up.”
Ortiz went on one of Mexico’s most-watched news programs to talk about how the Gulf Cartel kidnapped four Americans in Matamoros last Friday and killed an innocent bystander in the process. Initially, the case only garnered minimal local attention with outlets only reporting a short official statement confirming the death of the bystander. Two days later, the FBI announced a reward for the missing Americans.
“That is a taste of the power that the Gulf Cartel has in Matamoros to silence local news outlets where they could hide this story until it became national news,” Ortiz explained.
Zuniga pointed out that a video recorded by a citizen helped further expose the kidnapping.
Once national and international news outlets began reporting on the abductions, the case garnered immense pressure on Mexico’s government.
“One thing is without a doubt, the response from Mexico’s government was unusual,” Ortiz said. “[It’s a] response you don’t see when the victims are Mexicans.”
Ortiz further claimed that the widespread violence in Mexico, particularly in Tamaulipas, is common where gunmen routinely stop tourists to extort them. Since most of the victims are not U.S. citizens, there is little response from authorities.
“Tamaulipas is a state where the number of forced disappearances reaches thousands,” Ortiz said. “There are clandestine grave sites everywhere. It is terrible what is happening in Tamaulipas. But in this case, there was massive deployment of military and police forces until they were able to reach [the kidnapping victims].”
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