iortiz@themonitor.com
Dozens of memos made public earlier this month by the National Security Archive — a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit — detail conversations from 2009 to 2012 among U.S. intelligence officials, consular officials and law enforcement agencies regarding the worsening security situation in Tamaulipas, including both San Fernando massacres and frequent firefights between the Gulf Cartel and its ally-turned-rival, the Zetas drug gang.
The Gulf Cartel is a crime syndicate based in Matamoros that traces its roots to the 1930s or ’40s, when the organization smuggled liquor, guns and tobacco across the Texas-Tamaulipas border. In the 1960s, the organization broke into the lucrative drug trade and became one of the leading drug cartels in Mexico.
The Zetas formed in the late 1990s as an enforcement group comprising military deserters and police officers who received training from Guatemalan special forces — known as the Kaibiles, according to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration records. They quickly earned a name for themselves for their brutality.
In early 2010, the Zetas split off from the Gulf Cartel, sparking a brutal turf war that continues to this day. During most of the turf war, newspapers in Reynosa and Matamoros have remained silent about the local violence, opting instead for coverage of drug battles elsewhere in Mexico. The papers also have offered a healthy dose of political stories that tend to paint northern Tamaulipas in a positive light.
Most of the information in the cables has been reported previously by major news outlets, but some of the ones sent by former U.S. Consul Michael Barkin point to the Gulf Cartel’s control of the press in Matamoros and Reynosa.
