Twice last year, the Mexican government sent soldiers to patrol the streets of Nuevo Laredo. Traffickers are armed with AK-47 assault rifles, grenade launchers and bazookas, outgunning and intimidating local police, and 11 local officers have been killed since 2002.
"They want to show force, want to be seen," said Mayor Daniel Peña Treviño. "On the U.S. side, they have learned it is better not to be seen." But he also complained that his city was being unjustly tarred as a dangerous place for U.S. visitors, the great majority of whom return home safely, and he said the crime scare has caused sales at some local businesses to drop by half.
A Mexican federal police officer, one of hundreds called in to restore order in Nuevo Laredo after a series of drug shootouts, guards the Nuevo Laredo customs office. The city is one of the busiest U.S.-Mexico border crossings.
(2003 Photo Guillermo Arias -- AP)
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Although they are in different countries, Laredo and Nuevo Laredo seem like one city. Laredo, with 200,000 residents, and Nuevo Laredo, with 450,000, are connected by language, blood, culture and commerce.
In Laredo, where 97 percent of the population is Hispanic, many residents have relatives across the river. The city's populace doubles on many days because so many Mexicans enter to work or shop. Many possess a "border crossing card," obtained after passing a background check, which allows them to visit the United States as long as they remain within 25 miles of the border.
Americans need no permit to enter Mexico, and Nuevo Laredo attracts U.S. citizens who want to visit relatives or buy cheaper medicines or prescription eyeglasses. It is also a magnet for Laredo's young people, who flock here on weekends to dance until late and take advantage of the lower drinking age, 18 vs. 21.
It was the nightlife that drew Cisneros and Martinez across the border in September. The two were last heard from about 3:30 a.m. when a friend in Texas reached them on a cell phone.
They told the caller they were in Martinez's white Mitsubishi, just a few blocks from the bridge. They said would be back in the United States in a few minutes. The car was later found in a Nuevo Laredo junkyard.
One evening this week, relatives of the two young women sat at a kitchen table in a middle-class section of Laredo and wept. They complained of being caught in a legal "no-man's land," saying that U.S. officials have no authority to investigate crime in Mexico and that Mexican authorities are either corrupt or intimidated by drug gangs.
Cisneros's father, who spoke on condition his name not be used for fear of the kidnappers, recalled his last words to his daughter as she left the family birthday dinner: "I know you're 23 now, but you're still my baby. Be careful."
