Drug violence erupts in Mexico's Tamaulipas state

At least 14 people died Tuesday in several firefights between federal forces and gunmen in the city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas. The dead included 10 alleged gunmen, two federal police officers and two bystanders, Tamaulipas state authorities said.

Gunmen blocked some of the industrial city's main avenues with buses in the afternoon and then ambushed federal police officers on patrol, officials said.

Earlier this month in the border town of Ciudad Mier, gunmen peppered the facade of the main hotel, leaving at least 20 bullet holes in the two-story building. The next day, soldiers killed four of the alleged attackers. A day after that, three other gunmen were found dead near the Rio Grande.

On a road near the state line between Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas states, authorities say gunmen ambushed a state police patrol Tuesday in the town of Sabinas Hidalgo, killing an officer and wounding a colleague. Two other state police officers later went missing as they drove to Sabinas Hidalgo to investigate.

A spasm of violence has left at least 64 dead just in the northern state of Tamaulipas this month, according to an Associated Press tally of official and Mexican media reports. Many are worried about a return to the worst days of 2010, when the security wing of the powerful Gulf Cartel turned on its former bosses, forming the breakaway Zetas group that has distinguished itself for butchery.

Although that rivalry continues, authorities say many of the recent killings are the byproduct of a fresh feud between two Gulf Cartel capos, former allies who are struggling for control of cities or stretches of border.

Tamaulipas has always been a focal point in the drug war, one of the busiest places on the U.S. border for northbound drugs and migrants and southbound weapons and cash. The federal government sent troops to the state in November 2010, turning military patrols into a routine feature of border cities. The violence has never fully abated, but even by the standards of Tamaulipas, April has been extreme. Mexico's federal government has promised a new strategy, though it has yet to offer details.

Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said the government's new security strategy may be similar to the aggressive measures taken in the central state of Michoacan, where President Enrique Pena Nieto has sent in thousands of troops and police, arrested officials for cartel ties and installed a special federal commissioner as the most powerful official in the state.

"The state has not been abandoned," Murillo said of Tamaulipas. "It requires another kind of strategy, an adequate one for Tamaulipas, adequate for Tamaulipas' conditions. That is what we will have shortly."

But Rep. Filemon Vela, a Democrat from Brownsville, a Texas city on the northern bank of the Rio Grande and directly across from Tamaulipas state, said, "The fact is right now the federal government response in Tamaulipas is nowhere near what it needs to be." 

Much of the current violence has its roots in the February arrest of Javier Garza Medrano, who oversaw the Gulf Cartel's drug, kidnapping, extortion and gasoline theft activities in the Gulf coast city of Tampico, according to Mexico's National Security Commission. Garza apparently came to believe that a rival in the cartel, Aaron Rogelio Garcia, provided the information that led to his arrest, and ordered the man's murder, according to a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Gunmen then opened fire at Garcia's April 3 funeral in Matamoros. The government acknowledged that an 18-year-old woman was killed, but the unnamed official said three people had died, including Garcia's wife, brother and sister-in-law.

Attacks on Garcia's allies followed in Tampico and neighboring Ciudad Madero, the official said. Twenty-eight people were killed in the two cities over four days, 14 of them in a five-hour span during fighting between criminal groups that included drive-by shootings and execution-style killings. Victims were dumped on streets and, in one case, inside an ice-cream shop.

In addition to the Gulf Cartel infighting, several deaths have been attributed to a feud between the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas, while still other people have died in clashes between gunmen and Mexican military units.

The Associated Press