At Mexico Morgue, Families of Missing Seek Clues
Alfredo Estrella/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Forensic workers carry a body found in a mass grave in Matamoros on April 11.
By ELISABETH MALKIN and DAMIEN CAVE
Published: April 15, 2011

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MATAMOROS, Mexico — The last time anybody heard from Josué Román García was last August, after he and his older brother stopped for dinner in an isolated town about 90 miles south of the Texas border. His final known words went out via text message, from inside the trunk of a car.
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“They just kidnapped us in San Fernando,” Mr. Román, a 21-year-old student, wrote to a friend. He warned against calling, and added, “If anything happens, just tell my parents, ‘thanks, I love them.’ ”

On Wednesday, his father, Arturo Román Medina, answering calls on a cellphone that stores that brief note, arrived at the morgue in this border city, hoping and fearing that he would find his sons. For two weeks now, the authorities have been bringing in bodies from mass graves around San Fernando, 145 corpses at last count, and with each new grave discovered, another crowd appears, seeking news of missing loved ones, clutching photographs, holding out their arms to give blood for a DNA sample.

They are looking for closure, but as their gathering has grown into the hundreds, it has hardened a perception that government authorities have fought desperately to dispel: parts of northern Mexico, including most of this state, Tamaulipas, have been lost to criminal gangs, and for quite some time.

Even after government promises of more security following the discovery of a mass grave holding the remains of 72 Central and South American migrants last summer, also in San Fernando, Tamaulipas remains a state that experts describe as ungoverned — or simply failed.

Open war between the Gulf Cartel and its former enforcers, the Zetas, means that the roads here are still filled with gang lookouts on motorcycles, who report back to cartel leaders, residents say.

Gunmen believed to be tied to the Zetas assassinated the lead candidate for governor last year and later forced a mass exodus from a small town near the Texas border. Extortion payments have become more regular than taxes, security analysts say, while many of the authorities are either terrorized or bought off: 16 municipal police officers have been arrested so far in connection with kidnappings and killings.

“It is one of the places where clearly state, federal and local authorities are not in control,” said Eric Olson, a security expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. “It’s tragic, it’s unfortunate, but it’s a reality.”

For the Mexican government, few things are as sensitive as an American pointing out lost territory. When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton likened Mexico’s drug trafficking last year to an insurgency, “where the narco-traffickers control certain parts of the country,” Mexican lawmakers responded with fierce condemnation.

The tensions only worsened after Carlos Pascual, the American ambassador, questioned Mexico’s crime-fighting abilities in diplomatic cables, quoting a former high-ranking Mexican official who “expressed a real concern with ‘losing’ certain regions” of the country to cartels. Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, was so infuriated by that cable and others that he insisted on pushing out Mr. Pascual, who resigned last month.

And yet, despite promises of help, the families and residents here say they have seen little progress in Tamaulipas. Instead, they have witnessed squabbling between top officials — Tamaulipas is governed by political rivals to the president’s party — and lackluster enforcement.

Mr. Román, the father of two missing sons, complained that government checkpoints were always in the same place and easy for criminals to avoid. Alfonso Ortega, whose brother Martín disappeared a year ago on his way to Matamoros, described a galling lack of urgency.

“The government is not moving,” Mr. Ortega said. “It’s not doing anything.”

The authorities believe the Zetas are behind the murders in San Fernando, though they have only theories about the motives: kidnappings for ransom, perhaps, or attempts at forced recruitment.

Regardless, experts say the trouble in Tamaulipas stems partly from the gang’s history. Its leaders started out as enforcers, so when they split with their former patrons in the Gulf Cartel a few years ago, the Zetas could not rely on historic ties with drug suppliers or traffickers. To thrive and expand, they branched out to other crimes, including extortion, migrant smuggling and the siphoning of oil and gas from pipelines in the area.

Many of the gang’s early leaders served in the Mexican military, and they have used their experience to create a level of intimidation that outmatches most rivals’. No local newspaper dares to print the photos the government has issued for the 17 suspects in the latest San Fernando killings.
Mr. Román, a burly man in rubber sandals who has driven back and forth countless times from his home in Mexico City to prod the authorities, is just one of many here with once hidden tales of fear, a sullen bureaucracy and overwhelmed investigators.
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Workers unloaded a body, found in a mass grave, from a refrigerated truck last week at the morgue in Matamoros, Mexico.
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He said that all the official attention now focused on identifying the dead here has made his sons’ loss even more painful. “They don’t help you look for your sons when they are alive,” he said.

Indeed, the morgue and the prosecutor’s office next door are now the area’s main hubs of activity. This week, dozens of people shifted uncomfortably on chairs in tiled hallways, their sadness subdued as they waited to give statements.

Next door, bodies came and went. At one point, a refrigerated truck with dozens of corpses wrapped in black plastic left for Mexico City, where additional investigators would continue the process.

Those waiting here looked exhausted beyond grief or anger. “I just ask God to bring him back, even if he’s dead,” said Ana María López, whose husband disappeared in the border city of Reynosa on March 11.

Nicolasa Carvajal López said she had come from Dallas, where she lives, because she feared the worst for her brother Bolívar Santamaría López. He boarded a bus in his home state, Guerrero, on March 29 along with five friends bound for Reynosa, where they planned to cross into Texas.

The men promised to call when they arrived at the border. When they did not, Mr. Santamaría’s wife and the other relatives forced the news out of the bus company: the bus had been stopped by gunmen in San Fernando and all the men and boys had been forced off.

“We were pooling our money,” said Ms. Carvajal, covering her face with her hand as she explained that all 10 of her brother’s siblings in the United States had paid for his trip. “He was coming to make a living.”

She pointed to several photos of her missing brother. He was 45, strong, with a sandy-colored mustache. “I still have hope that he will call me and say, ‘Hey there, Sis, here I am,’ ” she said.

The authorities have told the families to be patient, that many people are missing. And once again, they have pledged to make the area safe.

On Tuesday, José Francisco Blake Mora, Mexico’s interior minister, promised to secure all the roads around San Fernando and to prosecute the killers.

But few of those who are arrested in Mexico are ever convicted. And Msgr. Faustino Armendáriz, the bishop of Matamoros, doubted that the government was doing enough. “By their fruits, you shall know what is being done,” he responded with biblical flourish. Then, he ticked off the towns of his diocese. “When you pass through,” he said, “there is a great sense of vulnerability.”

He added that drug gangs had sown fear into the people of his diocese for more than a year. Now, he prays for change — and demands that the government keep its promises.

“We have to hope that this time they act on all their declarations,” he said, referring to the state and federal governments. “We have to demand that there are conditions to live in security.”