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Brave few break Mexico drug war's code of silence
By: cnn.comPosted On: 06/21/2010 1:54 P
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Maria Jesus Mancha had just come from burying her son.
Maria Jesus Mancha had just come from burying her son.
It took her about 20 minutes to drive to the cemetery from her house in a lower middle-class neighborhood in the Mexican border city of Reynosa. In just half that time she could have driven across the border into Texas.
That's how close the frontlines in Mexico's drug war are to the United States.
Mancha says Reynosa is not so much a city under fire in the drug war as a city where security officials have cut a deal with the devil and now work with or for the cartels.
Her son Miguel Angel Vazquez, 27, was a computer engineer in a U.S.-owned assembly plant in Reynosa. He was married with two young children.
"I blame the authorities, our bad government and the police. You must realize these people are disguised as police," she said, referring to cartel gunmen as "these people."
A local newspaper El Sol, citing police sources, said only that her son was caught in crossfire when narcos opened fire on a police patrol as he drove home around midnight.
But Mancha dares to contradict the official version. Other residents of Reynosa also believe that some in the police take orders from the now-dominant Gulf Cartel -- but they keep their opinions to themselves.
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