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.
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