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 Editorials | Issues | February 2008 
Tensions Increase with Heightened Military Presence
 Jared Taylor - The Monitor
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| | A Mexican federal policeman stands guard during an anti-drugs mission in Culiacan in this February 8, 2001 file photo. (Reuters/Daniel Aguilar) | | |
Ciudad Miguel Alemán, Tamaulipas, Mexico — Crossing the border from Roma, the first image to greet a tourist’s eye is a camouflaged, machine gun-holding soldier.
He leans into the car looking for anything suspicious and then waves people through the border checkpoint.
Next to him, soldiers lean on a converted Humvee, their fingers dangerously close to the trigger.
But away from the border crossing, few soldiers patrol the afternoon streets and life seems to continue as normal. Residents of this border city say that the soldiers have calmed some of the violence in the city, but their presence has also spurred fear for some of the residents.
In the town center, three little girls giggle and bounce on a raised trampoline. Casually tossing a ball back and forth, their parents look on from a park bench in the city’s town square.
Men stop and chat, smoking a cigarette, catching up on the latest gossip.
A few blocks away, a customer argues with a store owner about an outstanding bill. He promises to pay, but the owner keeps asking when.
The sense of calm is only an illusion for some.
“I’ve heard of people being detained in the street and houses being searched and that causes some fear,” said Miguel Ángel Huerta in Spanish, as he worked at an auto body shop Wednesday. “But it’s calmer now and there’s more peace in the streets.”
The troops arrived about a month ago after bloody gunfights between drug cartels and federal officers broke out in Reynosa and Rio Bravo.
Soldiers have seized more than 10 tons of marijuana, plus at least 89 assault rifles and more than 83,000 rounds of ammunition in just the past two weeks in this city, according to local and federal officials.
Ciudad Miguel Alemán is home to about 24,000 residents.
With the seizures of guns and drugs came complaints from the city’s residents that the military has also searched homes without respect and improperly confiscated property, city spokesman Juan Ángel Sanchez Ramos said.
“The mayor has asked for the military to do searches with respect for the people in town,” Ramos said in Spanish. “We have received lots of complaints. Things have been stolen. They have been treated poorly.”
Javier Sanchez, the local Mexican infantry commander, said he believes about 40 percent of people coming through the Roma-Miguel Alemán international bridge appreciate the heightened security.
As he stood at the bridge’s Mexico entry, Sanchez watched his soldiers randomly inspecting vehicles that passed.
“The people who aren’t doing anything want us to stay,” he said. “The rest want us to leave.”
Sanchez said he did not know how much longer his troops would station in the city.
At El Zopoto restaurant in the city’s downtown Wednesday, three Noreste bus line drivers sat and ate a lunch of beef fajita, munched on tortillas and drank from glass bottles of Coca-Cola.
They refused to give their last names, because they said kidnappings have been on the rise inside and out of the city in the past month.
“It’s been a real benefit to have the soldiers here,” Arturo, one of the bus drivers, said in Spanish. “We’d like them to stay.”
Monitor Staff Writer Paige Lauren Deiner contributed to this story.
Jared Taylor covers Edinburg, the Delta region and general assignments for The Monitor. |
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