- NUEVO LAREDO -- Given that
he is a marked man, protected round the clock by bodyguards after his predecessor
was gunned down on his first day in office, Omar Pimentel is surprisingly
optimistic about his prospects for survival. "Why would anyone want
to kill me?" he asks disarmingly. Perhaps he's in denial.
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- As the new police chief of Nuevo Laredo, a lawless Mexican
frontier city where rival drug cartels are waging a murderous battle for
control of the smuggling route into America, Mr Pimentel, 37, has signed
up for one of the most dangerous jobs in law enforcement. Nuevo Laredo
is the bloody focus of gang wars that are raging along the US-Mexican border
and have claimed 600 lives this year, mostly in mob-style killings.
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- Gruesome pictures of the mutilated corpses of the two
latest casualties in the gang war were emblazoned across the front pages
when we met last week. The victims - the 105th and 106th to die in the
city this year - had been blindfolded, tortured and repeatedly shot before
their bodies were dumped near a highway. Just three days earlier, America
- after warning its citizens to steer clear of Mexico's border badlands
- had closed its consulate here as the bloodletting between the Sinaloa
and Gulf cartels reached alarming new heights.
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- A half-hour bazooka and machine gun battle outside a
suspected traffickers' safe house was heard throughout the city. Lists
identifying some of Mr Pimentel's officers as being "sentenced to
death" were reportedly retrieved from the building.
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- When a councillor and his bodyguard were shot on Friday
the death toll reached 108. This year's bloodbath, reminiscent of the brutal
Hollywood thriller Traffic, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas,
has been fuelled by renegade American-trained Mexican army commandos who
have been bribed to change sides and join the cartels.
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- The warfare has claimed the lives of 15 policemen - eight
since Mr Pimentel took control last month - several of whom are believed
to have been working for the drug gangs. The city's police ranks were so
riddled with corrupt and crooked officers that they were all sent home
last month after the Mexican president, Vicente Fox, ordered the army in
to take over security duties, with no evident success.
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- About 460 police returned to the streets after being
vetted last week, but more than 200 others were weeded out in the battery
of polygraph, drugs and psychiatric tests and background checks.
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- Nuevo Laredo is a an urban jumble of pastel-coloured
storefronts, tequila bars and taco food-stands near the river Rio Grande
which divides Mexico from Texas. The city bustles in the morning, but empties
out in the heat of the remorseless summer sun. The streets would normally
fill up again at dusk as people emerged to eat, drink and shop, but nowadays
few venture out after dark.
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- Also absent from the city are the American tourists,
their dollars a vital prop for the economy, who used to pour across the
Rio Grande to buy bargain-priced cowboy boots and enjoy the nightlife.
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- After just seven months, this year's murder toll is already
nearly double the 64 killings in 2004. Scores more have been abducted and
are still missing, including young women from American Hispanic families
in the twin Texan town of Laredo. Many of the victims were involved in
crime, but not all. Two newspaper reporters and a female radio journalist
are among the dead.
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- By any standards, the amiable, quietly-spoken Mr Pimentel,
who has a two-year-old son and whose wife is six months pregnant, is facing
a policing nightmare. He sees it as a challenge.
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- "This is about having the courage to do something
for my community," he says as soothing music plays on the computer
in his office. "I have a young family and I want Nuevo Laredo to be
a good and safe place for them to grow up.
-
- "The moment you start thinking about your personal
safety and bring fear into the equation, that negative attitude will affect
how you do your job. That's when it's time to get out.
-
- "My wife did think I was crazy at first, but now
she supports me and thinks I'm doing the right thing. I've explained to
her that I'm not looking for trouble. I'm not looking for confrontation."
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- Is Mr Pimentel, who used to run the local police academy,
also trying to persuade the drug gangsters that he's not looking for trouble?
Rather implausibly, he insists that his priority is common crime, such
as robberies and traffic offences.
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- It may not be enough to protect him. The city's last
police chief was murdered by hitmen last month just seven hours into the
job. The man who held the job before him quit after receiving threats.
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- For his part, Mr Pimentel rarely ventures out from his
office in a fenced compound on the edge of town, changes his route to work
each day and only entertains at home. His hand-picked bodyguards, armed
with assault rifles, never leave his side.
-
- He admits that some police officers had been lured to
the "dark side" by bribery. He hopes to increase a policeman's
average monthly salary of 7,000 pesos (£370) by 40 per cent in an
effort to buy their loyalty.
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- For all the gang warfare, parts of the city are relatively
affluent because of legitimate cross-border trade. Large houses, immaculate
lawns and new hotels testify to the wealth that has come Nuevo Laredo's
way. This is the busiest land crossing between America and Mexico, with
about 8,000 trucks crossing each day plus thousands of cars and pedestrians.
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- The volume of the traffic means, however, that American
customs agents can check only a fraction of the vehicles entering the country
- and that is the loophole that attracts the smugglers. The Pan American
Highway turns into US Interstate I-35 at the crossing-point but many locals
simply call it Narco Alley, just as they refer to Nuevo Laredo as Narco
Laredo.
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- "This is a strategic place for good business and
a strategic place for bad business," admits Daniel Pena, the mayor
who appointed Mr Pimentel. "People can smuggle here with impunity.
They bring firearms in from the US and send drugs over to the US. It's
not just our problem."
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- This year's violence erupted after Osiel Cardenas, the
leader of the Gulf cartel, was jailed and Sinaloa gangsters, led by his
bitter foe Joaquín "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman, tried to
move in on Gulf's turf. That bloody battle is still being fought.
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- Guzman is thought to be running the turf war from remote
ranchlands in his home state of Sinaloa, on the Pacific Coast. There, a
powerful mix of terror and money have bought him the loyalty and silence
of locals.
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- "People see Chapo Guzman as the social [minded]
bandit, as a Robin Hood," said Victor Hugo Aguilar, a professor at
the Autonomous University of Sinaloa. "He fixes up the towns and puts
lights in the cemetery. He is part of Sinaloan folklore." Guzman,
50, has developed close ties to Colombian cocaine bosses during his two-decade
career and fuelled his reputation for cunning when he escaped prison inside
a laundry cart in 2001. Mexican agents are conducting a nationwide search
for Guzman and have arrested his brother and son. They believe he has narrowly
escaped their grasp several times.
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- The violence is doing little to improve relations between
America and Mexico. Although the consulate will reopen tomorrow America's
renewal of its travel advice to citizens, sparked a diplomatic row. President
Fox accused Washington of over-reacting, while Mexican officials are exasperated
that they are taking the blame for failing to end the smugglers' war.
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- Meanwhile Mr Pimentel and Mr Pena give little sign of
having a plan to end the terror. Last week, on the sun-baked central square
outside the mayor's office, two soldiers manned a table under a sign urging
citizens to surrender illegal weapons in a gun amnesty. None was handed
in. It was a lonely vigil.
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
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- http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/
08/07/wmex07.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/07/ixworld.html
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