Atraco a mano armada - A hold up at work

The action just keeps getting closer. Last night the "Bad guys" made a strike at work.
 When I got to work this morning everything seemed normal. As I made my rounds checking on machines and parts I stopped to talk to Miguel, the Plant 4 manager. He said that he was worried because of something that had happened on the second shift. I immediately thought that there we personnel issues and asked him what happened.
 He said that armed gunmen had entered the plant and took the night shift superintendent into their custody after taking his cell phone from him. They then commandeered a cutting torch and and proceeded on to the cafeteria where they cut open the ATM machine and cleaned it out.
 Yesterday was payday and Thursday is the day when typically the employees withdraw money from the ATM at work. Estimate is that they probably got away with 390,000-520,000 pesos. $30,000 - 40,000. Dollars American that is.
 Danny, the night superintendent was released unharmed after they got the cash. He was shaken but said that the robbers were very calm and professional. They took what they wanted and left.

 When Ruben and I went to lunch today the ATM was cordoned off and the torch was still there to the left in the photo. The investigators from the bank were there assessing the situation. You can't see it in the picture but the floor in front of the ATM was charred from the torch.
 I asked Ruben how many guys there were. He said two with Danny two more in front of the building and 4 more in a car behind the plant. He said they also held up the factory behind us VDO is their name. They wore hoods when they went VDO but were unmasked when they held us up. VDO has cameras, we don't.
 In the first photo you can see the parking lot where I park. The white pickup is mine. There is a locked gate and there is a security guard in the little building there by the gate. They are unarmed however and now I see are largely useless. They are little more than parking monitors, my sense of security has really gone down after this incident.
 The police are useless they are in collusion with the bad guys. Those guys were in the plant for more than a hour and no help arrived. Well onward and upward, tomorrow is another day. Remember it's an adventure.

The week of Hurricane Alex

Its been an eventful week here in Matamoros/Brownsville. First was the assassination of Gubernatorial candidate Rodolfo Torre Cantu on Monday, followed by the tropical storm Alex that eventually turned into a hurricane.




The murder of a major political figure in Mexico barely




got passing mention in the U.S. news. I find it a little disturbing that we have a war going on right at our border and it seems to be of so little concern to the media. If a candidate for Canadian Provincial Premier was killed to keep him from office I would image the news would treat it differently.
 Rodolfo Torre was the populist candidate from the PRI party. He was a probable shoe-in for Governor of Tamaulipas which is the state that Matamoros belongs to. I hadn't been following the campaign real closely except for seeing the campaign posters all over the city.
 The cartel were apparently unable to buy him off so the did the next best thing...took him out of the picture.
 The rumor mill at work is very active and I think we knew within minutes of the assassination that it had taken place. I tried to google it and could find nothing until later that afternoon. The American media seemed to have very little information although it was all over the Mexican Television. We watched footage at lunch, as there is a TV in the cafeteria. They already had news crews at the scene and true to Mexican journalism they showed what they could of the bodies. They were covered up but had they not been all would have been reveled. The media in Mexico is extremely graphic, if you die in the streets your pictures will be everywhere.

 The influence that  the cartel will have on this election remains to be seen. The brother of Rodolfo Torre has stepped up and been accepted as the candidate on the ballot for Sundays election. It takes a man of great courage to step up and fill the shoes of someone who was murdered, especially when he was your brother.
 I tried to get a take from people at work on their view of the killings and the cartel attempts to influence the political process.

 There is a strange love/hate relationship going between the ordinary citizens, the

government and the cartels. After years of  corruption in the government there is a basic mistrust of the very people who should be helping them. As for the cartels as long as they are not actively killing innocent citizens they are viewed somewhat as folk heroes. In some ways they are a success story, they are wealthy and powerful. The income from the drug smuggling is ten percent of the economy in Mexico. That is significant in a country of great poverty. The gangs are a way out for many young people. It may lead to their death but we know how the youth can be, living only for the excitement of the moment.

 As so we will see how this play out come election day, which by the way is a holiday in Mexico... this is something we should emulate in the US. Lets make it important enough to take a day from work.

 The second part of the week was building to the tropical storm Alex. We closely followed it's progress as it moved across the Yucatan peninsula and into the Gulf of Mexico.

 This was my first hurricane as far as being in the path of it and I didn't know exactly what to expect. Most of our natural disasters like earthquakes and tornadoes hit with little or no warning.  The arrival of a hurricane can take days from when the storm is first broadcast. The exact place of landfall was uncertain even hours before Alex hit. The models early after the storm moved into the gulf had Brownsville as a direct hit. We took it quite seriously, Denise went shopping for nonperishable food stuffs, batteries, sandbags for the back of the house and extra gas for the grills in case we lost power.

During hurricane Dolly two years ago there were areas that lost power for weeks following the storm. There was also massive flooding so we were trying to be prepared.

 The rains began sporadically on Tuesday as the storm approached, still a tropical storm. At work the decision was made to move the two upcoming holidays from the 5th & 6th of July to the 1st & 2nd which was Thursday and Friday. The floor workers also had Wednesday off since they work 4 tens and normally have Friday off.

 Wednesday morning I went to work with trepidation, it was raining steadily and it takes very little for the streets of Matamoros to flood. Traffic going in to work was horrible. There were very few buses but the car traffic seemed normal. There was an accident at one of the major intersections so that really slowed things up.

 When I got to work it was quiet. All the machines were shut down by the night shift and they were ready to head to their houses and batten down the hatches. All through the morning the rain kept increasing as the bands of clouds moved ashore. With no machinery running the sound on the roof was loud. There were crews sandbagging the loading dock areas as these fill up with rain even with normal storms.

 I was very anxious about the flooding and the possibility of getting stuck in Mexico during the hurricane. Alex had officially become a hurricane as of the night before.

 About 10:00 Ruben popped his head into my office and said "We have a sample to run in machine 412." Oh great, were my thoughts, we've been here three hours and now we suddenly decide that we have to run a sample. Two shots is all that is needed just to verify some repairs to the mold.

 Issac had already put the mold into the machine and the resin was in the dryer so it wasn't too bad. Just start up the machine and cycle it in, about 30 minutes work. Just as we got parts and I was shutting the machine back down Miguel came into Plant 4 and called us over to tell us that they had decided to shut down all 4 plants at 11:00 so we could head home.

 I wished everybody luck with the hurricane and headed for the border.

 The mornings rain had already taken their toll on the roads. The main road back to the border crossing is eight lanes. A center divider followed by two lanes then another divider and two more lanes. The dividers naturally act as dams and hold in the water. No one was using the two outer lanes as they were floorboard deep in water. When I got to the turn at the Soriana dept. store the roadway was like a river, far more suited for boats. I drove slowly through it an into the customs area which was also flooding.

  The bridge was clear and there was only a few cars at the inspection station for which I was thankful. My windshield wipers have a short somewhere and they had quit working so I was struggling to see. They started back up after I got on the freeway and was nearing home.

 Home to finish taking down the hanging plants and sand bag the back door. We didn't board up the windows, just taking a chance that it would not be a direct hit. We moved Kazumba and Sweetie Pie into the house as they have been living outside on the patio. The rest was just a waiting game. Watching the rain dance down the street and the wind pushed it in waves. We went out for a walk during a lull in the afternoon. The rain was warm and we were wearing shorts. There was a good amount of water going down the streets but the drains were funneling everything into the resacas. There was some minor flooding in yards but mostly in areas that were bare ground like around the bases of trees.

 We kept waiting for some great wind action but nothing materialized. The news reports warned of tornadoes that were spawned from the clouds but they were all to the north and west of us. They also said that the tornadoes were "rain wrapped" and you would'nt see them until they hit. Thanks for the warning.

 Alex finally made landfall at 9:05 pm, about 100 miles south of us near the fishing village of San Fernando. They got blown around pretty good with 120 mile an hour winds and torrential rains.

 Here the winds didn't really pick up until after I went to bed at 10:00 or so. I went outside at 6:00am on Thursday to the sound of birds singing. There was some debris from tree branches and palm fronds but really nothing terrible. We were spared a disaster this time.

 I rode my bicycle around town in the morning checking out everything but all looked good. In the afternoon we drove out to Boca Chica to see the beach. The surf was very heavy and there were piles of Sargassum in heaps all along the sand. Sargassum is a seaweed that generally floats in large masses in the gulf. It is home to many sea creatures such as the fiddler crabs.

 So all in all it was a fairly exciting week. Remember....it's an adventure! Peace.

The calm before the, well you know..........

Things have been oh so very quiet. Many people at work have been saying that "Things have returned to normal". People in Matamoros have gone back to their routines. Going out a night, socializing, and just being more relaxed.
Reuben told me the other day that one of the major Zetas bosses and four of his bodyguards had been killed by the marines. This guy, he said was the one behind the kidnappings and killings in Matamoros. The Gulf Cartel are back in charge and they are considered to be "The good Cartel". The devil you know is better than the devil you don't.
These two cartels have history together. The Zetas formed some years back with 31 members who were deserters from the Mexican Army. Now these weren't just ordinary soldiers but rather highly trained specialists that had received some of their training in the good old USA. It is believed they were originally trained at the military School of the Americas in the United States and by other foreign specialists of the United States, France and Israel. They were trained in rapid deployment, aerial assaults, marksmanship, ambushes, small-group tactics, intelligence collection, counter-surveillance techniques, prisoner rescues and sophisticated communications.
This group was recruited by the Gulf Cartel to kill off rival cartels. They were essentially a mercenary army hired by drug dealers to kill off the competition.
This all began in the 1990's and they continued in this fashion until this year in February when the Zetas and its ally, the Betran Leyva Cartel engaged in a violent turf war against its former employer/partner, the Gulf Cartel, in the border city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas. It was reported that a Gulf Cartel member killed a top Zeta lieutenant named Victor Mendoza. The Zetas demanded that the Gulf cartel turn over the killer. However the Gulf Cartel refused and an all-out war has broken out between the two gangs.
There is just too much money floating around and every time one of the "Big Fish" get killed either by rival gangs or the military, there is someone else stepping up to take over.
Last night the calm was broken. Los Zetas attacked right in central Matamoros. They went after the police this time. There was an attack at the police station near the Los Laureles colonia located off of Sixth Street just past the Mundo Nuevo theater.
 Denise woke up early this morning to tell me that she had heard about in on the 10:00 pm news.
And then I heard about it at work.
Ruben told me that he was downtown yesterday evening taking his daughter to swimming lessons. He said that he heard the opening explosions. He thought they were hand grenades, followed by automatic weapons fire. The military showed up shortly in their helicopters. He said they were told not to leave and were there at the gymnasium for an hour before they could go home. There was only one lane open even then Ruben said. Dulce repeated almost the same story. She lives within earshot of the police headquarters and could hear the whole ordeal from here house.
The news reported this one, probably because of the location and the police being involved. There were at least 10 reported dead, some 6-7 of them reported to be police.

So it continues as I was sure it would. This is a feud, a play for power and money. There will be no end to this craziness until we as a nation realize that the whole drug war is a failed notion and try a different direction. In the mean time I go to work each day and try to maintain a low profile.

Labor Day in Mexico

Happy Monday, It's a holiday in Mexico and because I work there I now must take their holidays as a day off. The holiday we are celebrating today is Labor Day and Mothers Day combined. The government holiday is Labor day of course and that is celebrated world wide on May Day, that it the 1st of May.
The holiday as labor day has its origins in the American Socialist Labor Movement of the 1800's. It's a little odd that it is recognised world wide as such but not acknowleged in the U.S.A.

This was the movement that brought us the 8 hour workday and a two day weekend. It was hard fought and cost some people their lives. We should not forget the sacrifices that these people made in order for this to be. We as a nation have our labor day in September and this in itself is a classic case of misdirection.

To understand why the government declared Labor Day a national holiday in 1894, we need to look at what was going on in that year. 1894 saw several labor explosions surrounding May Day, which the First Congress of the Socialist International had declared International Workers’ Day in 1889, in memory of the martyrs of the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago. On May 1st, 1894, May Day riots began in Cleveland as millions who found themselves unemployed following the “Panic of 1893” took to the streets to demand that their grievances be heard.


On May 11th of 1894, the workers of the Pullman Palace Car Company struck. They were soon to be joined by Eugene Debs’ American Railroad Union, which effectively shut down rail traffic out of Chicago. The President, Grover Cleveland, reacted harshly, sending troops to put down the strikers. Bloodshed and further uprisings followed. Debs was jailed, and the strike was finally put down in the middle of June.

The bosses and their government were clearly fearful of the May Day riots and the Pullman strike. One reason for their fear was that the memory of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the 1877 general strikes and uprisings across the US were clearly on their minds, and this explained president Cleveland’s trigger-happy response to the strike. Days after the strike was put down, Cleveland pushed a proposal for an officially recognized Labor Day through Congress, which passed unanimously. It was declared officially on June 28th, 1894 and was first celebrated in September of that year.

Labor day in those times was not the holiday as we now know it: The end of summer, beginning of football season, a three day holiday to vacation on. In the beginning labor day was a day of speeches by labor leader of the time and it was a day when workers gathered to discuss and protest unfair labor practices.

We need to remember those folks ansd those times as we are in a constant struggle between labor and business. Business will always try to pay as as little as possible, work us the longest possible hours and days, to employ (exploit) our children, or some other countries children. If we are not vigilant we will see these hard fought "Freedoms" slip away from us.

As we are now in an economic downturn it is ever more imperitave that we resist the push from corporations to give too many concessions to them. Many businesses are experiencing record profits and crying poor mouth at the same time. We are working more hours every year. It now takes two people's income to provide the living that was gotten by one persons labor in the past. Our pensions are slipping away and retirement is being postponed by many people.

So this May let's remember our ancestors who fought hard for us. Remember also it was the Socialist movement and Unions that brought all this about. Both of these are being labeled as "UnAmerican" and undesirable right now, by guess who? The Republican party has become a mouthpiece for big business and the Democrats are not much better.

The Socialist movement and our declining Unions are as American as apple pie.
Happy Labor Day!

Cinco de Mayo

Cinco de Mayo and I'm at work. Cinco de Mayo is a bigger holiday in the US than it is in Mexico, at least here in the border region. There are some celebrations in and around Puebla, Mexico where the battle took place. A bit of history here: This was a war between France and Mexico. The Mexican government had decided to stop paying interest on its nation debt. Hence the conflict.
The Battle of Puebla was important for at least two reasons. First, although considerably outnumbered, the Mexicans defeated a much better-equipped French army. "This battle was significant in that the 4,000 Mexican soldiers were greatly outnumbered by the well-equipped French army of 8,000 that had not been defeated for almost 50 years." Second, it was significant because since the Battle of Puebla no country in the Americas has been invaded by an army from another continent.
Anyway back to my day. Ruben and I went to lunch around 12:30. He went to the front lobby first with a vendor who had come to talk to us earlier. He said he would meet me in the cafeteria. When I got there the place was packed, there were no empty tables so I bought something to drink and headed back to my office in Plant 4 to eat lunch.
I wasn't there very long when Ruben came in with his orange drink in hand, he said "I didn't even finish my drink." so I asked him what was going on. He said that there was a shoot out happening between the Cartel and the Marines down of Lauro Villar the avenue that we take back a forth between work and home. Keith expressed surprise and then said that Frank and Doug were out to lunch. We wondered if they knew and how they would get back to work. I said "Maybe they will just head back home if the road is blocked." Keith said "No that won't happen because they rode together to lunch and they wouldnt leave the other car here". About this time Victor popped his head in and asked if we had heard what was going on. He said that the Marines had one of the "Big Dogs" trapped at the Hotel Playa. Ruben said that he had seen two helicoptors and heard automatic weapons firing.
The rumor mill is very up to date in the plant. Everybody seemed to know what was going on very quickly. None of this of course is reported on the news. At least as of now I haven't seen or heard anything on the news.
Doug and Frank showed up a little after 1:00 very excited and telling us that they had been at lunch when they heard about the shooting. They said that someone at the resturant told them that he knew how to drive through the back neighborhoods and get around the road block. They were just there long enough to gather up their stuff and head back across the border "before they close the bridge"
Keith and I decided to wait it out rather than drive around while this was all going on.
I went back to doing normal work duties and tried to put it all out of my mind until quitting time.
I left a few minutes early. Dante said that he had heard the roads were all open again so I got in my truck and got ready to leave. The security guard opened the gate for me and pointed to the road and said "Lauro Villar es cerrado", Lauro Villar is closed, so I turned to the right and headed toward the other road hoping he was wrong. There was almost no traffic in the industrial park and as I approached Lauro Villar I saw only a couple cars going by.
I turned onto Lauro Villar and started heading toward the bridge. When I got to the Hotel La Playa which is on the south side of the road there were at least 50 soldiers there in trucks and standing around guarding the entrance to the parking lot. I was wishing I had a camera and then thinking that they probably would not like people taking pictures of them.
The drive home was uneventful other than the soldiers at the hotel. Traffic was lighter than I've seen so people were avoiding the area. The line at the bridge was short, only about 6-7 minutes it was showing as 1 hour when Doug and Frank left so it was probably a good thing to wait it out.

That was my Cinco de Mayo, hope yours was better.... more next time. I will add to this if I find out more about what happened there.

How the Cartels operate.

Friday night, another week has passed at work. I want to add some stuff to my first post.
Dante, Keith and I got into a discussion at work about how Lolo (Isadoro) was robbed in front of the plant and how that relates to the situation in Mexico with the Cartel and the police and the soldiers. He said that Lolo must have done something to draw attention to himself. I repeated what Ruben had said: That it was because Lolo had tinted windows. Dante said "yes" that was probably it, plus maybe he was speeding or ran a red light, a common occurrence in Mexico. Dante went on to say that the Cartel guys have spotters all over Matamoros that are looking for members of the rival cartel. You cannot do something that will draw their attention. If Lolo had been a gang (cartel) member they probably would have killed him on the spot.
The two cartels here are the Gulfo de Mexico Cartel and the Zeta. The Zeta are trying to take over the territory all up and down the border. Dante call the Zeta the bad cartel and the Golfo Cartel the "good" cartel. I don't know why. I have seen pictures of killing by the cartel, the bodies are beheaded or dismembered or both. Dante showed me pictures of an SUV that was found in Sonora with body parts from 14 people. This was a message to the rival gang and the police. Horrible.
The story is the same from everyone that I talk to. The Cartel thugs are bold and brazen, they are better armed than the federales and they go about town as if they were the supreme power. The police for the most part are bought by the cartels.
I said that I thought the soldiers we bought also because the cartel guys go where ever they want in broad daylight.
Dante then explained how they are able to do that. He said wherever the cartel go they have spies, called Hawks, dispersed every where in a 5 or 6 square block area around where they are. If any soldiers get within a half mile of their location the Hawks will alert them and they disappear. He said the only hope that the soldiers have of catching them out and about is to swoop in with helicopters.
Dante also said to watch behind a convoy of soldiers next time we saw one. He explained that 2 or 3 cars behind the soldiers we would see a car with a couple of young men in it talking on a cell phone alerting the cartel bosses to the soldiers every move.
So this seems to put the soldiers in the catch up mode. The cartel appear to be one step ahead of them and they have the upper hand, at least this is the perception by the average man on the street. Denise heard this same story almost verbatim from a guy she was talking to in Progreso.
This somewhat illuminates the current situation here in Matamoros. The locals don't go out after 8:00 pm without a very compelling reason to do so. They don't dare flaunt anything that might show they have money and they don't do anything that might draw attention to themselves. How sad.
Next post I will try to talk about some of the wonderful people I have met here. I don't want to make it seem like every day is one of fear and cowering, it's just that you must be aware of your surroundings at all time. You can not let your guard down.
Peace.

The first post

Since Facebook limits your post to 422 characters I have started this blog. I am starting this to chronicle some of my "adventures" working in Mexico. I started working in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico in January of 2009 as the plant I worked at in Haysville, Kansas, USA was transferring all machines and product to Mexico. I volunteered to help train the people in Matamoros with the thought that if I liked it and they liked me I might be able to get a job there. I spent the next 7 months traveling back and forth and living in a hotel in Brownsville, Texas. For the first three months I never had a car so all I really got to see was the road back and forth to work. After I got a car on weekends I began to explore the surrounding area of South Texas and Mexico.
I had basically zero Spanish when I started this and have had no formal teaching yet. I learn what I can from people I talk to. It’s slow going but I do feel like I am progressing.
I am now working full time in Matamoros but it is far from routine. From the beginning I kept telling myself "Remember - It's an adventure" My son told me the same thing, hence the name of this blog.
Mexico is a far different place from the good old USA; I will try to illuminate some of that in this blog from time to time.
Today: 26 de Abril, 2010
This morning before work one of the technicians, Isadoro, that came in early to start up was followed to work. He knew he was being followed but didn't think much of it but when he got ready to park the guy pulled in front of him. Two more vehicles pulled in behind him and blocked his escape. He was robbed at gunpoint, by guy with automatic weapons. They took his tools, Cd's and whatever else he had in his car that they wanted; he told me that he didn't have any money, probably true.
The security guard popped out of his guard house and was told to get back in, they told him that he saw nothing. He is unarmed. Another tech, Alfredo, pulled up as this was going on and was told to drive away.
This is another example of a corrupt government that will not protect its citizens, also proves out the adage that when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns. The citizens of Mexico are not allowed to arm themselves. No one called the police….they would not help apparently. There are large groups of armed thugs that have the run of town right now. They drive openly down the streets brandishing weapons and terrorizing the honest citizens. The police are bought off by the cartels and the news reporters are told that if they report the activities of the cartel they will be killed. This is reminiscent of the lawless days of the American west except at this point there is no Wyatt Earp coming to the rescue. All that the people here have are the soldiers and they are not to be 100% trusted either. They have the authority to shoot to kill and have been known to accidentally take out some of the civilians.