HAVE WE GOTTEN USED TO SPILLOVER VIOLENCE ALREADY?

"Anoche escuché varias explosiones. Tiros de escopeta y de revólveres.
Carros acelerados, frenos, gritos. Eco de botas en la calle. Toques de
puerta. Quejas. Por Dioses. Platos rotos. Estaban dando la telenovela.
Por eso nadie miró pa' fuera."
Despariciones...Ruben Blades

By Juan Montoya
It must have been about 5:50 p.m. or so last night when I was visiting a friend of mine who lives in the neighborhood off Eastern Blvd. near Walmart.
We were talking out on his porch when I heard the unmistakable sound of either hand grenades or some high explosive. Not once, not twice as if a transformer had exploded. Rather, it was a succession of explosions that came from just south of where we stood, somewhere across Boca Chica Blvd. in the direction of McDavitt Street.
Sandwiched in between the loud explosions was the unmistakable burps of machine guns and a few single shots coming from the same direction.

We looked at each other and wondered what that could have been. Was there a running gun battle with grenade launchers and machine guns between rival gangs? But in the gathering dusk and on a busy street in a neighborhood?
"We'll probably read about it in the newspaper," said my friend.
Last night I looked all over the television broadcasts to see whether the gun battle had been reported. There was nothing. This morning I looked at the newspaper for any tidbits of information that might have made the news. There was nothing there either.
Now, to our neighbors across the Rio Grande, running gun battles between rival gangs or cartels or between the Mexican marines and the gangs are a daily occurrence. The skirmishes make the Internet frequently and depict all-out war on the streets of Matamoros as pedestrians scramble to seek cover behind cars and buildings. These shootouts sometimes last for a quarter of an hour or more.
Yet, read the local newspapers and there is nothing there. In fact, they never report the carnage that occurs there almost on a daily basis.
We've had our share of spillover violence here. Not long ago there were reports of a gun battle with machine guns in the Southmost area that got some media attention. Then a bomb that exploded in a home and hurt some of the occupants, including children, made the news. And there have already been convictions in the case of the kidnapping of a man from a Las Prietas sea food restaurant who was shot once in the head and his body dumped just north of here along the expressway, allegedly by thugs from Tamaulipas settling a score.
What else has happened that we are unaware of, or that the local cops don't let on?
If we were skeptical about spillover violence before, the accumulation of evidence that it is already here have grown persuasive. The explosions and machine gun fire we heard last night have not been explained or reported.
What gives?