Officials Issue Warning After Murder on Falcon Lake

Following the fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen boating on Falcon Lake Thursday, Texas law enforcement agencies are asking visitors to the popular freshwater fishing spot to stay clear of the Mexican side of the international body of water. A 30-year-old man was shot in the head by Mexican gunmen, officials said, after he and his wife navigated their Jet Skis past the international boundary in what officials say was a sight-seeing trip to Guerrero Viejo, Tamaulipas. Authorities have not found the man's body, but he is presumed dead. Officials allege the attackers were armed Mexican pirates, who continued shooting at the surviving wife after she fled back toward U.S. waters.

“The Zapata County Sheriff’s Office, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department are telling boaters on Falcon Lake to stay on the United States side of the lake and not venture into Mexican waters,” says a statement released today by the Texas DPS. “Fishermen are still advised to stay as far away as possible from any of the Argos-type fishing boats typically used as fishing vessels by Mexican fishermen. These boats have a large prow, a small outboard motor without a cowling and no identification numbers on the hull.”

Officials said the assailants could be “members of a drug trafficking organization or members of an enforcer group linked to a drug trafficking organization who are heavily armed and using AK-47s or AR-15 rifles to threaten their victims.”

Thursday’s incident marks the fifth time since April boaters have run into trouble on the popular lake. According to the DPS statement, previous attacks include:

April 30: Four heavily armed men boarded two boats near the Old Guerrero area and demanded money. After collecting $200 in cash, the bandits tried to follow the U.S. boats as they sped back to U.S. waters. The bandits stopped once they reached the United States boundary.

May 6: Two armed men approached a boat near Marker 14 on the north side of Salado Island on top of the ruins at Old Guerrero. The men demanded money, which the fishermen gave them.

May 16: Five armed men boarded a boat on the United States side of the lake near Marker 7. Investigators have no further information on the incident.

Aug 31: Falcon Lake pirates, in a small boat marked “Game Wardin (sic)” in duct-taped letters, attempted to stop a Texas fisherman. The fisherman's knowledge of previous DPS safety warnings about Falcon Lake and the misspelling of "warden" alerted him something was wrong, and he outran the Mexican vessel to safety.

The Equestrian Statue of General Francisco Villa was a gift to the people of Arizona from the President of Mexico. Bronze, it is in the tradition of equestrian statues and poses the General in action. It is located in the downtown Tucson 20 de agosto Park.

Although much revered as a revolutionary hero in Mexico, the memory of Villa in the U.S. is more often that of a bandit. The gift inspired many heated conversations and letters to the newspaper that brought in issues of cultural diversity and politics, and is well remembered today by most long-time Tucsonans. The solution to the controversy was to face the statue pointing south, in a not heavily trafficed location, surrounded with trees.

According to biographer Fredrich Katz (1998), Villa was a Robin Hood figure to the poor of Mexico, stealing from wealthy miners, ranchers, and others and redistributing the money or goods (such as cattle) to peasants. In Robin Hood Style, Villa is said to have noted that the poor were owed compensation for the work and working conditions they had endured. His actions in these redistributions are often characterized as brutal. But there is no question that he was a crucial figure in changing the governance of Mexico during the Mexican Revolution of 1910 towards a more democratic, socially oriented structure. Because Villa was commander of the Northern Division of the forces of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, his actions sometimes directly affected U.S. towns close to the border. Revolutionary battles along Arizona’s borders that involved Villa’s troops occurred in Agua Prieta, Naco, and Nogales, Sonora (the state that adjoins Arizona to the south). U.S. Americans were terrorized and killed during these battles. In Nogales, 60 miles south of Tucson, Villa’s forces had a shootout with American soldiers in 1915 and in 1918 Mexican and American troops exchanged gunfire when a Mexican arms smuggler was shot while crossing the border (Trimble, 1989). Most famous is the Villistas’ raid on Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916 after a bad arms deal with a resident of the town, Sam Ravel, that resulted in the deaths of 17 US citizens, mostly local residents. (The raid is also sometimes interpreted as retaliation for President Wilson’s collaboration with the Carranza government that resulted in serious defeats to the Villistas at Agua Prieta, Sonora, and Celaya in central Mexico.) Until recently, according to Katz, Villa was the only foreign born person since 1812 to have invaded, attacked, and killed U.S. Americans inside the country’s borders.

http://www.cfa.arizona.edu/are476/files/pancho.htm

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