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.