The Drug Wars Are Not What They Used To Be.

I remember the day they shot Cuco Reyes Pruneda. Or at least I remember the headlines that Sunday morning. I was on my way to buy Sunday morning barbacoa at a place around the corner from our house in downtown Nuevo Laredo; I must have been ten or eleven years old, plotting in my head how I would manage to scrounge the ojo, my favorite part, from everyone else at the table. The headline was atop a stack of still bundled newspapers -el Correo, el Diario, el Ciuidadano, el Mañana-I don’t remember which. “El Cuco Acribillado,” it read in bold, red letters. There was no need for more description, everyone in town knew who el Cuco was. His family, the Reyes-Martinez clan, was waging a war, defending their “plaza” over control of the drug smuggling routes against a Texan named Fred Gomez Carrazco. This was a bold hit and even a 10 year old understood the ramifications. Those were different times, though. The city wasn’t under siege. The criminals killed each other, but they had the decency to have their shootouts in some remote part of the rural edges of the city. Town folk were only witness to headlines and very graphic pictures of the aftermath. Cuco was killed by cops avenging the death of two of their own, it’s said that American agents helped spring the trap that killed him. Things are much different now in my childhood home. The drug war has spread into the streets and into people’s homes. I have family and friends who have fled across the border, into Laredo, Texas, for safety and I haven’t been to visit my old haunts in years. It’s gotten that bad.

for more, click here

[posted by Sylvia Lopez]