GRAPHIC: 74 Killed in Weeks-Long Cartel War near Texas Border

REYNOSA, Tamaulipas — The raging cartel war for control of this city resulted in at least 74 officially-counted murders. Many more victims have been incinerated just south of the Texas border.

In early May, Breitbart Texas began reporting on rival factions of the Gulf Cartel fighting for control of this border city. The continuing conflicts resulted in convoys of cartel gunmen roaming the streets looking for their rivals.

Overnight, cartel gunmen dumped a bloodied corpse with a posterboard where one cartel factions threatened their rivals. Bodies with warnings had not been seen previously in Reynosa. However, they are commonplace in Ciudad Victoria and in the border state of Nuevo Leon where Breitbart Texas has been reporting Los Zetas and other cartels are also carrying out massacres.

The violence spiked in early May, shortly after Mexican authorities killed former Gulf Cartel boss Juan Manuel “Toro” Loiza Salinas in late April. His death led to a power vacuum where his former allies are trying to fight off the another faction that appears to be favored by other cartel leaders. The ongoing fighting has led to a spike in highway robberies, armed robberies, kidnappings, and extortions as cartel commanders continue to look for ways to fund their ongoing war. 

The raging violence by the Gulf Cartel immediately south of the Texas border led to the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) issuing an alert to agents that they represent regarding the cartel war just south of the border, Breitbart Texas reported. The NBPC warned federal agents about the constant gun battles and the possibility of spillover violence or stray rounds fired in Mexico landing in Texas.

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.