Chaos Down Mexico Way Mission woman found dead
“For those of us who remember Mexico’s golden days – crime was not a real worry if you stayed in the decent parts of any city, more personal liberty — it’s still hard to fathom Mexico’s slide into lawlessness.”
That was a lead to a story published in The Advance News Journal last March, and if anything, the situation has only grown worse over the past 12 months.
Getting hard news out of Mexico is no easy task these days. Most of the legit journalists have been either cowed into not reporting the news, or they have been murdered by the cartels when they do report it. Even some of the citizens who have used social media to report the cartel-related violence have been assassinated.
As a counter, two journalists from this side of the border, Ildefonso “Poncho” Ortiz and his managing director and editor- in-chief, Brandon Darby, manage to do stellar reporting for Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles (Breitbart.com), going where few others dare to go.
Ortiz has deep confidential sources on both sides of the river and deep into the interior as well. For anything to do with the Mexican crime beat, especially in the state of Tamaulipas, Ortiz has become The Advance News’ Go-To guy.
Few can match the sources Ortiz has developed over the years. He started out life in Matamoros, lived there for a period of time, went to school on this side of the border, and then pursued a career in journalism in the U.S. When Mexico figuratively blew up in late 2006 and early 2007, Ortiz soon learned that those Mexican contacts he had made over the years would and could pay off if he turned his niche to border crime reporting, mainly from the south side of the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo in Mexico). Along with Darby and several others, Cartel Chronicles was launched under the Breitbart.com umbrella.
Some people, mainly from the Left, have suggested that the Breitbart online site sensationalizes Mexican border violence to promote a political agenda - border militarization. However, the news is the news, and only Ortiz and company, along with some citizen journalists, are consistent with reporting the news taking place in a country now deemed one of the most dangerous for working journalists. In fact, for news reporters, working journalists, 2022 proved the deadliest year in at least three decades. Fifteen were murdered, which matched the slain number in Ukraine. (Source: AP.)
Ortiz and Darby not only cover the cartel/crime news on the surface, which is bad enough, but they’re known for actually going into Mexico to dive deep into news stories that other news outlets avoid, simply because of the danger associated with the job.
American Victims
Do you remember that story about the four Americans who went missing in Matamoros the first week of March? They had driven there from North Carolina so the one woman in the group could get a tummy tuck at a local clinic, a fraction of the cost of what the same procedure would cost in the U.S.
Here’s the deep dive that only Ortiz and Darby could pull off: turns out, the Gulf Cartel was using a municipal ambulance service to drive at least two of the victims to local medical clinics for treatment.
Seriously. Seems the man who oversaw the Matamoros municipal department in charge of the ambulances was a former cartel gunman and convicted drug trafficker who used to carry out kidnappings in Tampico, according to Ortiz.
Then, more recently, a woman from Mission, 20-year-old Bionce Jazmin Anaya Cortez, went missing April 6 as she was making her way to Nuevo Leon to visit relatives in the China, a relatively small city of approximately 11,000 about 60 miles northeast of Monterrey.
China, by the way, is the same city that the two women from Penitas were driving toward with a friend of theirs when they disappeared Feb. 25th.
The state of Nuevo Leon, with its capital city of Monterrey, population of approximately 1.1 million residents, is a place red with blood. According to Ortiz, Monterrey has been averaging 800 to 900 murders a year over the past several years.
“Most of it is tied to street-level drug distribution, but among the victims, they have taken innocent people, and unfortunately, it was just a matter of time before people from South Texas became victims of that crime wave,” said
Ortiz. “Bottom line, everything in Mexico is just getting worse.”
When Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) came into office, he basically sidelined the military forces that had been making a dent in the cartel operations and replaced them with the National Guard, which according to Ortiz, has no real investigative experience or power, and are simply guys with guns.
“That’s why the cartels are basically acting with impunity. The most recent example is the kidnapping of the four Americans in Matamoros. Hundreds of soldiers and National Guardsmen were sent to the city, but ultimately, the only people arrested were the ones that the cartel itself surrendered.”
At the time, the Gulf Cartel said that the five men it turned over had kidnapped the four Americans without proper authority.
“That’s just insane,” said Ortiz. “The fact that no one else has been arrested related to that case just shows how much Mexico’s government is protecting these cartels. They chased those Americans around town, shot at them, and then took them with complete impunity. Once they took them to a stash house and learned that they were Americans, and things started to get heated, the Gulf Cartel actually took them to a clinic where they tried to get them some medical care.
"When they were moving them around, they were actually using ambulances tied to the city’s fire department. We did a deep dive on that story. So they used city ambulances to move them to a clinic where they were able to patch up one of them.”
Turns out, said Ortiz, you have a Gulf Cartel hitman who goes to prison, and then when he gets out, he becomes the director of civil protection in Matamoros.
“And now he’s lending the ambulances to the Gulf Cartel, moving around kidnapping victims,” said Ortiz. “That just shows how much control they have over the city/state.”
After Breitbart.com did its expose, he was fired and is under investigation.
“I think two other people from that municipal department are now also under investigation.”
In recent news, some Republican lawmakers are making noise - send troops into Mexico to clean up the problem, whether Mexico agrees with it or not. They say it’s the only way to stop all of the Fentanyl from coming into the U.S. Sounds extreme, but some lawmakers say these are extreme times. “The problem with that idea,” said Ortiz, “is that if you really start going after the cartels, you’re going to end up jailing half the government.”
Obviously, AMLO would have a lot to say if he heard that quote, but Ortiz said he knows it’s true based on what he sees.
Mexico’s True Power
“That’s where the true power comes from. It’s not the guys with the guns and the tattoos. And it’s not really just the politicians. Look at it as a sphere of influence. A cartel is a lot more than just its head and the government. A guy like El Chapo may be replaceable. But what’s not replaceable is that whole sphere of influence that gives them the power. We’re talking about the lawyers, the judges, the politicians that give them protection, the banks that launder the money, the financial consortiums that are able to launder the billions of dollars.”
On top of that, said Ortiz, you have the engineers, the architects, the scientists that help the cartels build better tunnels under the U.S./Mexico border or come up with ways to better mix the drugs like Fentanyl, which is now being named a crisis.
“Those people remain relatively untouched,” Ortiz said. “The Mexican government is protecting these criminal organizations, which is why it’s almost impossible to get anyone extradited to the U.S. The politicians protect them in exchange for bribes, political favors, campaign donations. It’s a very sad state of affairs right now.”
If you were to ask Ildefonso Ortiz what he would do if he were given a magic wand to improve conditions in Mexico and help quell the violence, given what he’s seen and the information he has gathered, he said: “It’s a message that’s been taken out of context by politicians, for whatever reason, to not let it happen, but if (the U.S. government, for example) and the international community were to declare the more violent drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, it would actually take away that sphere of influence because the laws for terrorism are actually stricter than they are for money laundering. The banks wouldn’t be able to move the money as easily. Politicians wouldn’t dare be able to protect them because they’d run the risk of being classified as a sponsor of terrorism, and then you’d start to see international sanctions being placed on them. On a white-collar basis, declaring them foreign terrorists would actually force Mexico to really do something about it.”
Ortiz said he’s not talking about military strikes from this side of the border.
“It’s more of a white-collar approach, and it would actually be effective in my opinion.”
Last sad bit of news: the Mission woman who disappeared April 6, Bionce Jazmin Anaya Cortez, her body was discovered a few days after her disappearance on a ranch near the town of El Verde. According to Mexican authorities, she died from contusions to the back of the head. (Source: Breitbart. com.) “The murder comes at a time when Nuevo Leon has experienced an ongoing wave of murders and kidnappings as the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas tries to take new smuggling territories away from the Gulf Cartel while also trying to hold on to their local drug distribution areas while the Sinaloa Cartel tries to move in.” (Source: Breitbart. com.)