Rather long article, but well worth the read. Make sure you note the Mexican Govts response to this.
By Danna Harman, USA TODAY
Melba Fassold's posse of five retired Texans, with little Mexican flags pinned to their lapels, crosses the border at 9:30 a.m. By 10, they're sipping pink drinks downtown. By noon, they have exhausted the offerings at the old marketplace, picking up cheap prescription drugs and cactus-shaped floor lamps.
Next stop for Fassold's $20-a-day tour is Garcia's for $8.99 enchilada and fajita specials, then maybe a slow afternoon samba on the dance floor - all before her tour group heads back home to the USA, five minutes away.
Tens of thousands of American citizens make the short trip across the Rio Grande every day to Mexican border towns. Business executives commute to work at hundreds of U.S.-owned manufacturing plants. Teenagers come to party because the legal drinking age, 18, is barely enforced.
Mexican-Americans visit relatives. Tourists come by the busload to shop, eat and - as sightseer Patty Hafer, 61, of Chappell, Neb., puts it - "do the Mexican scene."
Americans traveling across the border might want to rethink that scene, the U.S. State Department says. On Jan. 21, the department cautioned Americans about the Matamoros area. Five days later, it broadened the announcement to cover the entire border with Mexico.
At least 27 U.S. citizens have been abducted or have vanished along Mexico's border with Texas over the past six months, caught in what U.S. officials have described as an escalating turf war between competing drug lords. Fourteen have been released; two have been found dead. The fate of the others is unknown. By contrast, three or four such abductions were reported each year since 2000.
Yvette Martinez, 27, and Brenda Cisneros, 23, friends from Laredo, Texas, went to hear Mexican singer Pepe Aguilar in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, in mid-September and have not been heard from since; Gerardo Contreras, 18, from San Antonio has been missing since May, when he went into the Mexican town of Piedras Negras to attend his sister's baby shower; and Charles Rogers, an oncologist from Brownsville, Texas, was abducted at his clinic here and released only after his wife paid a hefty ransom.
Almost all 27 abductions have taken place in Nuevo Laredo and towns east of it along the border to Matamoros. The towns sit across from RV parks and condominiums in Texas, home of many "winter Texans" - Northern snowbirds who come to the Lone Star State to escape the cold.
The U.S. consul in Matamoros estimates that 100,000 Americans - mainly winter Texans but also businesspeople and spring breakers - are expected to cross into Matamoros this year alone. The vast majority of them, Fassold says, are perfectly safe.
"If you look for trouble, you can find it," says Fassold, a St. Louis native who started the first day tours across the border to Matamoros 35 years ago. She echoes the Mexican government's claims that the incidents of violence were connected to the drug trade.
Fassold, a self-proclaimed "Mexico-history nut" sports a dyed-red bouffant hairdo and enormous tinted glasses. She says the danger is being sensationalized by the media and hurting Mexico's reputation. "If you are not looking for trouble, you have nothing to fear," she says.
John Naland, the U.S. consul general in Matamoros, disagrees. The problem, he says, is that these days trouble might find you.
Two weeks ago, six off-duty prison guards from Matamoros' maximum-security prison were murdered, allegedly as a result of orders from drug lords inside the prison.
"It was the straw that broke the camel's back," Naland says. "It's one thing for bad guys to kill other bad guys at 2 a.m. - but when a powerful drug cartel takes out six innocent people in cold blood in the early evening, it's time to worry. ... Anyone could walk into this."
The State Department announcement about Matamoros was issued the next day. The following week, the State Department extended the advisory to the entire 2,000-mile border, from Matamoros in the east to Tijuana in the west.
"It's not a red light," Naland says. "It's blinking yellow."
"And what ... does that mean?" says Emigdio Manuel Garcia, owner of Garcia's. His 3,000-square-foot pink complex, yards from the border, features a full-service pharmacy (no prescriptions required), a crafts market, a restaurant and a bar. It takes up the entire block and employs 550 workers. Garcia's, he says, can get "pretty crazy" on Friday nights.
But perhaps not tonight. Since the advisory, business has been slower than usual. A nine-person staff of waiters has been cut to four. The five-man bar band plays to an empty lounge.
"This should be our best season," Garcia says.
Anger has been the typical Mexican reaction to the advisory and to the letter sent by U.S. Ambassador Antonio Garza to Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez expressing concern that the Mexican police were incapable of "coming to grips" with border violence. Derbez called the U.S. position "exaggerated and outside the scope of reality," on national TV.
Aides to President Vicente Fox (news - web sites) issued a statement implying that the warning was an attack on Mexican sovereignty.
Mexican authorities are trying to calm the situation and ensure that Fox's campaign against the drug lords does not falter. More than 650 federal police and 30 tanks were dispatched to patrol the region this week. They set up checkpoints, searched houses and surrounded the Matamoros prison. (Related story: Border patrol attacks rise)
In a phone conversation with President Bush (news - web sites) on Monday, Fox offered assurances of his government's "commitment to contributing to the consolidation of a safe and modern border," according to his office.
The mariachi band at Garcia's is on a break, replaced by a soulful keyboardist giving a soft rendition of Don't Cry for Me, Argentina. A table full of American businessmen are tapping their feet to the music and indulging in flaming bananas with vanilla ice cream. They come every day for lunch from a nearby plant that repairs cable TV boxes, says Tom Arce, controller at the factory.
Across the room, by the wooden dance floor, a waiter is courteously giving Fassold, the tour guide, a kiss on the cheek.
She will be back tomorrow, as always, with a new group. They will probably need just a small table
By Danna Harman, USA TODAY
Melba Fassold's posse of five retired Texans, with little Mexican flags pinned to their lapels, crosses the border at 9:30 a.m. By 10, they're sipping pink drinks downtown. By noon, they have exhausted the offerings at the old marketplace, picking up cheap prescription drugs and cactus-shaped floor lamps.
Next stop for Fassold's $20-a-day tour is Garcia's for $8.99 enchilada and fajita specials, then maybe a slow afternoon samba on the dance floor - all before her tour group heads back home to the USA, five minutes away.
Tens of thousands of American citizens make the short trip across the Rio Grande every day to Mexican border towns. Business executives commute to work at hundreds of U.S.-owned manufacturing plants. Teenagers come to party because the legal drinking age, 18, is barely enforced.
Mexican-Americans visit relatives. Tourists come by the busload to shop, eat and - as sightseer Patty Hafer, 61, of Chappell, Neb., puts it - "do the Mexican scene."
Americans traveling across the border might want to rethink that scene, the U.S. State Department says. On Jan. 21, the department cautioned Americans about the Matamoros area. Five days later, it broadened the announcement to cover the entire border with Mexico.
At least 27 U.S. citizens have been abducted or have vanished along Mexico's border with Texas over the past six months, caught in what U.S. officials have described as an escalating turf war between competing drug lords. Fourteen have been released; two have been found dead. The fate of the others is unknown. By contrast, three or four such abductions were reported each year since 2000.
Yvette Martinez, 27, and Brenda Cisneros, 23, friends from Laredo, Texas, went to hear Mexican singer Pepe Aguilar in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, in mid-September and have not been heard from since; Gerardo Contreras, 18, from San Antonio has been missing since May, when he went into the Mexican town of Piedras Negras to attend his sister's baby shower; and Charles Rogers, an oncologist from Brownsville, Texas, was abducted at his clinic here and released only after his wife paid a hefty ransom.
Almost all 27 abductions have taken place in Nuevo Laredo and towns east of it along the border to Matamoros. The towns sit across from RV parks and condominiums in Texas, home of many "winter Texans" - Northern snowbirds who come to the Lone Star State to escape the cold.
The U.S. consul in Matamoros estimates that 100,000 Americans - mainly winter Texans but also businesspeople and spring breakers - are expected to cross into Matamoros this year alone. The vast majority of them, Fassold says, are perfectly safe.
"If you look for trouble, you can find it," says Fassold, a St. Louis native who started the first day tours across the border to Matamoros 35 years ago. She echoes the Mexican government's claims that the incidents of violence were connected to the drug trade.
Fassold, a self-proclaimed "Mexico-history nut" sports a dyed-red bouffant hairdo and enormous tinted glasses. She says the danger is being sensationalized by the media and hurting Mexico's reputation. "If you are not looking for trouble, you have nothing to fear," she says.
John Naland, the U.S. consul general in Matamoros, disagrees. The problem, he says, is that these days trouble might find you.
Two weeks ago, six off-duty prison guards from Matamoros' maximum-security prison were murdered, allegedly as a result of orders from drug lords inside the prison.
"It was the straw that broke the camel's back," Naland says. "It's one thing for bad guys to kill other bad guys at 2 a.m. - but when a powerful drug cartel takes out six innocent people in cold blood in the early evening, it's time to worry. ... Anyone could walk into this."
The State Department announcement about Matamoros was issued the next day. The following week, the State Department extended the advisory to the entire 2,000-mile border, from Matamoros in the east to Tijuana in the west.
"It's not a red light," Naland says. "It's blinking yellow."
"And what ... does that mean?" says Emigdio Manuel Garcia, owner of Garcia's. His 3,000-square-foot pink complex, yards from the border, features a full-service pharmacy (no prescriptions required), a crafts market, a restaurant and a bar. It takes up the entire block and employs 550 workers. Garcia's, he says, can get "pretty crazy" on Friday nights.
But perhaps not tonight. Since the advisory, business has been slower than usual. A nine-person staff of waiters has been cut to four. The five-man bar band plays to an empty lounge.
"This should be our best season," Garcia says.
Anger has been the typical Mexican reaction to the advisory and to the letter sent by U.S. Ambassador Antonio Garza to Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez expressing concern that the Mexican police were incapable of "coming to grips" with border violence. Derbez called the U.S. position "exaggerated and outside the scope of reality," on national TV.
Aides to President Vicente Fox (news - web sites) issued a statement implying that the warning was an attack on Mexican sovereignty.
Mexican authorities are trying to calm the situation and ensure that Fox's campaign against the drug lords does not falter. More than 650 federal police and 30 tanks were dispatched to patrol the region this week. They set up checkpoints, searched houses and surrounded the Matamoros prison. (Related story: Border patrol attacks rise)
In a phone conversation with President Bush (news - web sites) on Monday, Fox offered assurances of his government's "commitment to contributing to the consolidation of a safe and modern border," according to his office.
The mariachi band at Garcia's is on a break, replaced by a soulful keyboardist giving a soft rendition of Don't Cry for Me, Argentina. A table full of American businessmen are tapping their feet to the music and indulging in flaming bananas with vanilla ice cream. They come every day for lunch from a nearby plant that repairs cable TV boxes, says Tom Arce, controller at the factory.
Across the room, by the wooden dance floor, a waiter is courteously giving Fassold, the tour guide, a kiss on the cheek.
She will be back tomorrow, as always, with a new group. They will probably need just a small table
, Art