Sources: Zetas try to enter Matamoros; priest killed in crossfire

McALLEN—Church officials and the community of Matamoros were in shock after a well-known Catholic priest was killed in crossfire during a Saturday afternoon shootout between armed gunmen and the Mexican military.

Sources outside of law enforcement said the shootout began when members of the Zetas tried to enter Matamoros.

Father Marco Antonio Duran Romero died at approximately 3:40 p.m. at a local hospital from a gunshot injury, according to a statement by Father Alan G. Camargo, a spokesman for the Matamoros Dioceses.

The Matamoros Dioceses issued a statement late Saturday expressing their deep pain at the loss of father Duran.

According to a Tamaulipas law enforcement official not authorized to speak to the media, Duran was struck in the chest by a bullet from a firefight between authorities and gunmen as he drove through Avenida Albino Hernandez in the Colonia Obrera.

Duran was widely known throughout the city because of a television show he had on a local channel and regular appearances on radio, where he discussed a wide variety of topics. He also served at the San Roberto Belarmino parish in the Colonia Portes Gil, according to a Matamoros resident who is close to the dioceses and was deeply sadden by the news

The firefight began at approximately 1:30 in the Colonia Obrera between groups of gunmen, and blockades began quickly popping up throughout the city in an effort to keep authorities away from the area, according to a Tamaulipas law enforcement official not authorized to speak to the media.

The blockades were reported near the offices of Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office—PGR and the downtown military base as well as other main avenues, he said.

Some of the avenues with blockades included: Sendero Nacional, Avenida Pedro Cardenas, Avenida Longoria, Lauro Villar, Calle Sexta and several others main avenues in the city.

At approximately 4:30 p.m. gunmen were still battling it out near Sendero Nacional, which is near the Tamaulipas State University--UAT campus.

A source outside of law enforcement with firsthand knowledge of the firefights in Matamoros reported that a squad of Zetas tried to enter Matamoros and was met by a squad of gunmen from the Gulf Cartel and that later the Mexican military arrived, creating a three-way firefight.

Here is a glimpse of what lies ahead if we fail to end our second attempt to control the personal habits of private citizens. Listen to Enrique Gomez Hurtado, a former high court judge from Colombia who still has shrapnel in his leg from a bomb sent to kill him by the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar. In 1993, his country was a free-fire zone not unlike Mexico today, and Gomez issued this chilling — and prescient — warning to an international drug policy conference in Baltimore:

“The income of the drug barons is greater than the American defense budget. With this financial power they can suborn the institutions of the State, and if the State resists . . . they can purchase the firepower to outgun it. We are threatened with a return to the Dark Ages.”

Profits from the Mexican drug trade are estimated at about $35 billion a year. And since the cartels spend half to two-thirds of their income on bribery, that would be around $20 billion going into the pockets of police officers, army generals, judges, prosecutors and politicians. Last fall, Mexico’s attorney general announced that his former top drug enforcer, chief prosecutor Noe Ramirez Mandujano, was getting $450,000 a month under the table from the Sinaloa cartel. The cartel can of course afford to be generous — Sinaloa chief Joaquin Joaquin Guzman recently made the Forbes List of Billionaires.

The depth of Joaquin Guzman’s penetration into the United States was revealed a few weeks ago, when the DEA proudly announced hundreds of arrests all over the country in a major operation against the “dangerously powerful” Sinaloa cartel. One jarring detail was the admission that Mexican cartels are now operating in 230 cities inside the United States.

This disaster has been slowly unfolding since the early 1980s, when Vice President George H.W. Bush shut down the Caribbean cocaine pipeline between Colombia and Miami. The Colombians switched to the land route and began hiring Mexicans to deliver the goods across the U.S. border. But when the Mexicans got a glimpse of the truckloads of cash headed south, they decided that they didn’t need the Colombians at all. Today the Mexican cartels are full-service commercial organizations with their own suppliers, refineries and a distribution network that covers all of North America.

As we awaken to the threat spilling over our southern border, the reactions are predictable. In addition to walling off the border, Congress wants to send helicopters, military hardware and unmanned reconnaissance drones into the fray — and it wants the Pentagon to train Mexican troops in counterinsurgency tactics.

Our anti-drug warriors have apparently learned nothing from the past two decades. A few years ago we trained several units of the Mexican army in counterinsurgency warfare. They studied their lessons, then promptly deserted to form the Zetas, a thoroughly professional narco hit squad for the Gulf cartel, which offered considerably better pay. Over the past eight years, the Mexican army has had more than 100,000 deserters.

The president of Mexico rightly points out that U.S. policy is at the root of this nightmare. Not only did we invent the war on drugs, but we are the primary consumers.

The obvious solution is cutting the demand for drugs in the United States. Clearly, it would be the death of the cartels if we could simply dry up the market. Unfortunately, every effort to do this has met with resounding failure. But now that the Roaring ‘00s have hit the Crash of ‘09, the money has vanished once again, and we can no longer ignore the collateral damage of Prohibition II

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