ONGOING WAR NEXT DOOR GOES UNNOTICED

By Juan Montoya
Every week, Maria (not her real name), a Brownsville business woman who runs a restaurant and lounge goes across the Gateway Bridge to shop for the makings of Mexican food in the mercados of Matamoros.
At one stop she buys freshly toasted peanuts for her lounge. At another, over by Diagonal Street, she buys large slabs of chicharrones. At another place, just up the road, she gets beef chicharrones, or bofes, a favorite dish at her restaurant.
Although the commodities are also available on the Brownsville side of the Rio Grande, the cost in Matamoros is about one third what it would cost here.
"A kilo of bofes costs about $5 there and about $15 here," she said.
Last week she took a female friend with her and they went about their business. After the shopping, they were going to stop and have a bite to eat.
Things were going smoothly and al they needed to buy were the peanuts that they would get on 12th Street near the Juarez Mercado and were driving on Diagonal when she thought she heard small pops behind her.
"What was that?" she asked the friend.
"It's probably some boys popping balloons," the friend answer
When she looked in her rear view mirror, she was alarmed to see a convoy of Mexican Marines at full throttle firing their heavy weapons at a car racing far ahead and weaving among traffic on Diagonal.
"It wasn't balloons," she said. "It was the soldiers chasing and shooting at some mañosos. They were firing over our heads all over the street. There were a couple of windows in the second stories of the houses above us that were shot out and pock marks where the bullets had hit the walls."
Unnerved at being caught in the crossfire of the running gun battle in broad daylight, she swerved her vehicle and tried to park on the side. Her fright and momentum carried her onto the sidewalk and she stopped the truck.
"My friend was telling me to lean down in the cab but we had bags of groceries on the seat between us and I couldn't get down far enough," she said. "I could hear the whizzing of the bullets flying overhead."
She said that the trucks of Mexican soldiers included one marine with a bullhorn giving the driver direction on where the car with their targets had turned.
"He was shouting at him to turn left and then right, and all the time the soldiers were firing indiscriminately down the entire length of the street," she said. "I heard that there have been several people who have been killed by stray shots being fired by the soldiers and nothing has been done about it."
Now this small business woman is thinking twice about going to do her weekly shopping in Matamoros. She says that even though groceries cost less there, her experience last week gave her cause for pause.
"How can people get used to living like that?" she wonders. "After the gunfight passed by, the people just resumed what they had been doing and went about their business. Some were looking at the broken windows and the shot up walls with curiosity as if they were used to it already. I'm thinking twice about going over there again."