AND WHAT ABOUT THE 800-POUND GORILLA IN THE ROOM?

By Juan Montoya

Ray Ortiz shakes his head in disbelief.
He has just heard about the shooting of three U.S. Consul workers in Juarez, across the creek from El Paso, by a group of drug gang members.
Ortiz – whose lifetime of undercover work for the Brownsville Police Department in Mexico earned him the nickname of El Gato Negro – disparages the federal government.
"How can they have Mexican citizens providing security for our consulate personnel?" he asks. "Go to Matamoros and see who is providing the security for the consulate personnel. It's all local people."
The guy seated next to him at the Siete Mares Bar agrees. He said that during one of many weekend bacchanals he ended up in the custody of the Brownsville P.D. and was lodged in the drunk tank. There he met a fellow soak and – in talking – he learned that the man worked as a security guard at the U.S. consulate.
"Está papita," the hungover guard said. "I just stand there and collect my check. En dolares."
Ortiz said that with the conflagration underway in northern Mexico and the U.S. Department of State urging consulate personnel to transfer their families to the U.S. side, it's high time for the government to straighten out its act.
"Why don't we have U.S. Marines guarding the consulates here just like we have in the bigger embassies?" he asks. "What's going to prevent the Cartel or the Zetas from holding the security guards' families hostage so that that can just walk in the place?"
Many people are now becoming aware that the residents of cities across the river are living in a virtual state of martial law. The streets are empty. The Mercado Juarez is dying. No one – absolutely no one – ventures out after dark onto streets patrolled by military convoys and bands of SUVs with tinted windows with groups of armed men inside.
Freedom Newspapers – after vainly trying to appease its Mexican advertisers with bland tourist stories depicting Matamoros as an idyllic Shangri-La filled with cavorting natives – has finally bit the bullet and admitted South Texans live on the fringes of a war zone.
However, the Orange County, California-based media conglomerate had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the stark reality that the Mexican government under Felipe Calderon had bit off more than it could chew.
What else could it possibly do?
After trying valiantly to paint the northern Mexico border as a tourist haven and sending reporters to interview chamber of commerce types and restaurant owners, the corporate media chain realized that trying to ignore reality with fluff pieces while the body count grew across the river could only damage it's already pummelled credibility.
The wake-up call came not after a shootout between Zetas and Cartel members in Valle Hermoso that left scores dead on the streets of this 48,000-population city, or as the stream of Mexican businessmen fleeing north continues to grow. But rather, it was the shooting of a growing number of American citizens in northern Mexico by armed groups.
The rastrojo that broke the burro's back was the shooting of three U.S. Consul workers in Ciudad Juarez across the creek from El Paso.
It took the State Department's warning about traveling in Mexico to slap the newspapers upside the head.
"The Department of State has authorized the departure of the dependents of U.S. government personnel from U.S. consulates in the Northern Mexican border cities of Tijuana, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey and Matamoros until April 12," the communique stated.
"Family members of U.S. Government personnel assigned to other areas of Mexico outside the Mexican border states are not affected by this departure measure," it reads.
"Send in the Marines," Ortiz said. "They already closed the consulate in Reynosa once. What are they waiting for?"