"It is very easy to scare people who have lived for years under threat from el narco," said Gustavo Rodriguez Vega, the Roman Catholic bishop in Nuevo Laredo. "If someone says, 'They're coming,' it scares everyone."
Residents say their plight is made worse by a lack of reliable information. Local news organizations, which for years have censored themselves for fear of angering drug bosses, are not reporting on the recent violence, including shootouts that were widely witnessed.
"We can't publish anything," said one newspaper executive.
In Reynosa, about 125 miles to the southeast, two Mexico City-based journalists were seized and beaten two weeks ago. At least five other border-area journalists are missing, their colleagues say, and a radio reporter died under suspicious circumstances. Authorities said he succumbed to a diabetic coma, but colleagues say he was kidnapped and tortured, according to Reporters Without Borders, a press advocacy group.
Tamaulipas residents have been barraged by terrifying rumors -- many of them unfounded -- delivered via e-mail, text message, Twitter and Facebook.
Parents across Nuevo Laredo raced to take their children out of school in late February after word went out of an impending gun battle, a rumor that proved untrue. A separate report, also false, said the city's mayor, Ramon Garza, had been assassinated.
Garza, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which dominates the state, blamed the cascade of untruths on an effort by organized crime or political opponents "to destabilize and generate mistrust in the public" during an election year. "This was manufactured," he said in an interview.
The Tamaulipas state government has added a breaking-news feature to its website, listing incidents that are officially confirmed. But many residents distrust what they see as spin control. They swap tips by e-mail and watch anonymously posted YouTube videos showing the aftermaths of recent shootouts: charred, bullet-riddled cars abandoned next to carpets of spent bullet casings.
"Rumor, that's how everyone is getting information," said a Nuevo Laredo restaurant owner, gazing over a room of empty tables at lunch hour. He said customers have stopped coming amid the recent violence.
Nearby, machine gun-toting soldiers stood guard on the roof of a funeral home where the bodies of four gunmen were said to be stored. The troops appeared to be guarding against a possible raid by hit men to seize comrades' bodies.
Some analysts say the latest clashes in northern Mexico may yet amount to a relatively brief jostling for position in the aftermath of the Cardenas sentencing.
Alberto Islas, a Mexico City-based security expert, compared the feuding to a corporate boardroom tussle. He predicted that the Gulf cartel and the Zetas would soon make amends and get back to the lucrative business of smuggling drugs to a hungry U.S. market.
"Like businessmen, they are negotiating," Islas said. "Here they kill people. That's the difference."
ken.ellingwood
@latimes.com
