| | |  Editorials | Issues 
Kidnapping Expert's Family Remains in Limbo
 Dudley Althaus - Houston Chronicle
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January 26, 2010
| | Felix Batista, 54, was snatched by gangsters in northern Mexico. (Houston Chronicle) | |
Mexico City Mexico's gangland havoc exacts immediate death or desolation from many of its victims, but the bell tolls more slowly for those even less fortunate.
More than 13 months after gangsters snatched her husband, Felix, from a northern Mexico street, Lourdes Batista still waits hopefully for the call announcing either that he's been freed or that police at least are really looking for him.
The call never comes. It likely never will.
I don't know what they've done with him, what's happened to him, the 53-year old elementary school teacher said of Felix, a kidnapping expert with a Houston security company who disappeared in Saltillo, an industrial city 200 miles south of Laredo. Many months go by and there's nothing to be said.
Felix Batista, 54, a contract employee of ASI Global, which provides kidnapping advice and rescue for companies worldwide, was in Saltillo lecturing businessmen on how to avoid kidnappings and how to react if one occurs.
He disappeared near sunset on Dec. 10, 2008. He was eating at a Saltillo restaurant, where he received some cell phone calls. He later left and climbed into a sport utility vehicle with at least one man he apparently knew.
Perhaps not coincidentally, a local security expert and Batista friend who had been abducted the day before was released hours after Batista disappeared.
Batista's family and colleagues have received no ransom demands, no proof of life, nothing at all from his abductors.
Officials in Coahuila state, of which Saltillo is the capital, haven't bothered to call, either.
Mexico's federal government sent a task force to Coahuila last February to investigate the kidnapping. FBI agents joined the search. Officials pulled 18 bodies from a clandestine narco-graveyard in a small town near Saltillo. Batista's wasn't among them.
Suspected Zeta accused
Federal police last April arrested an alleged member of the Zetas the killers allied with the Gulf Cartel narcotics smuggling organization and accused him of masterminding the abduction, among other crimes. The accused gangster, an army deserter and Zeta founder known as El Tatanka, or The Buffalo, remains in federal prison on racketeering charges unrelated to Batista's disappearance.
There has been nothing since then.
FBI agents stay in touch, as do ASI Global executives.
Coahuila state Attorney General Jesus Torres told Mexican reporters last November that there have been advances in the case, but wouldn't provide details.
He did say, however, that Batista is likely dead.
It's a big question mark how things are done down there, Lourdes Batista, 53, said of Mexico's police officials. It's a lawless place. Crazy, scary, very frightening.
Lourdes and Jackie Batista, Felix's sister, met Wednesday in Washington, D.C., with Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan, members of the Florida congressional delegation, and FBI and State Department officials. The women came away satisfied that Batista's abduction is not just a file number, Jackie Batista said.
We're looking for an answer, we're looking for a resolution, said Jackie Batista. Whatever the news is, we want to know.
With 16,000 people killed in the last three years, narcotics traffickers' wars with the government and one another grab most of the headlines in Mexico. But kidnapping and extortion have become the true scourge for many in the country.
Some 100 people are taken every month, by one government tally, more than 1,200 last year alone. Mexico City's chief prosecutor said last week that there are eight extortion attempts a minute in the Mexican capital, most of them by phone.
But such numbers reflect the tip of the torment. Many if not most abductions are never reported because families don't trust the police or feel it's more effective to negotiate on their own.
Felix Batista made his living handling those negotiations.
Helped to free 100
A Cuban-American and former U.S. Army major, the Miami-based Batista had joined ASI Global on a contract basis in 2007. But he had worked for years in Mexico, negotiating the release of some 100 kidnap victims, giving lectures on personal and corporate security.
He really cared about the place, really cared about the people, Lourdes said of Felix, whom she met when she was 14 and with whom she has five children.
I'm putting it in God's hands, Lourdes Batista said in an interview from the couple's Miami home. But night comes and it's difficult. I feel so helpless
What more can I do?
dudley.althaus(at)chron.com |
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