Americans target of abductions in Nuevo Laredo

AP/Washington Times:

For residents of this border city (Laredo, Texas), it was a terrifying yet familiar tale: Three more Texans vanished in the dangerous Mexican countryside across the Rio Grande, abducted amid reports of escalating violence between warring drug cartels.

The weekend kidnapping of a prominent Laredo businessman and two other Texans was the latest of dozens of abductions in recent years that have more people here steering clear of the once-accessible border.

"It's gotten a lot worse within the last year, to the point where you just don't go," said Angie Cuellar, a Laredo resident and longtime friend of kidnapped businessman Librado Pina Jr., 49. "I think the thing that scares me the most is being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Authorities said 30 to 40 armed men stormed Pina's remote deer-hunting ranch, located on dry scrubland and low rolling hills about 40 miles northwest of Nuevo Laredo. The men abducted Pina; his 25-year-old son, Librado Pina III; David Mueller, 45, of the Sweetwater area; Mexican businessman Fidel Rodriguez Cerdan; and Marcos Ortiz, a Mexican national who works as a cook at the ranch. Mueller and Cerdan were freed Wednesday.

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"When you have the extreme retaliatory drug violence, bad guy on bad guy, you get all the peripheral activity for other people, such as kidnapping," Vasys said. "When the big dogs are fighting, the little dogs look for opportunities to make their own money as well. The whole area is an opportunist's haven for just about all criminal activity."

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"It's just out of control; it's time for people to realize it can touch them," said Daniela Ortiz of Laredo whose husband, Sergio Ortiz, disappeared in Nuevo Laredo.

"It's the same pain," said Priscilla Cisneros, whose daughter, Brenda Cisneros, vanished in Nuevo Laredo in September 2004. "We feel what they're feeling right now."

Laredo and Nuevo Laredo are essentially one contiguous city separated by the Rio Grande, which divides the two cities but links their economic destinies.

Laredo, a city of 175,000 residents, 90 percent of whom are Mexican-American, is the largest inland port in the United States. About 60 percent of U.S. trade with Latin America and 40 percent of the trucks that carry goods across the border go through Laredo, city spokeswoman Xochitl Mora said.

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The breakdown on the rule of law seems pretty complete in Nuevo Laredo. Mexico seems incapable of restoring its sovereignty over the area and local law enforcement is too frightened to act at all. It is a place to avoid and officials on the Texas side of the border need to make sure that the outlaws are contained on the other side of the river.