In what the Mexican media are calling "Black Friday," nine bodies—some bearing signs of torture—were hanged side-by-side from an overpass in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas [2], on May 4, while 14 decapitated bodies were found stuffed in a minivan left outside a customs inspection building. The heads were later found in three ice coolers left outside the city hall. Four of those left hanging from the overpass were women; the decapitated bodies were all of men in the their 20s. A professionally printed "narco-banner" in block letters on the overpass read: "This is how I am going to finish off [Asi me los voy a ir acabando] all the jerks* [todos los pendejos] you send to heat up [que mandes a calentar] the plaza," apparently a reference to a car bomb that exploded in the city center on April 24, targeting the police and injuring one. The banner included a warning for someone called "El Gringo" who it accused of car-bomb attacks. It closes: "Now we'll see you around, you bunch of whorish parasites." (Ahora ahí nos vemos bola de parapatras puto.) Authorities said the message appeared to be from Los Zetas [3] and addressed to their local rivals in the Gulf Cartel [2]. Mexico's federal government has launched an operation dubbed "Northeast Coordinator" in response to the inter-factional violence in Tamaulipas.
In a similar incident, a little more than two weeks earlier, 14 dismembered bodies were were found stuffed inside a minivan abandoned near Nuevo Laredo's city hall. The banner left with the bodies on April 18 was signed by fugitive kingpin Joaquin Guzmán AKA "El Chapo" [4]—seen as a sign that his Sinaloa Cartel [3] is now allied with the Gulf Cartel in a bid to take back Nuevo Laredo from the Zetas. Although the new narco-banner was not signed, authorities apparently consider the May 4 attack to be Zeta retaliation for the earlier one.
The new narco-banner was addressed to "Pinches golfas"—pinche basically means "damned or "worthless"; golfa is another slang word for "whore" or "slut," but could also be a punning reference to followers of the Gulf Cartel. It also boasts of killing someone who had asked "Comandante Lazcano" for mercy, which seems to be a reference to Zetas boss Heriberto Lazcano [5]. (Canal Sonora [6], Informador [7], May 6; AlJazeera [8], May 5; Borderland Beat [9], Houston Chronicle [10], LAT [11], May 4)
*literally, "pubic hairs"
See our last post on Mexico's narco wars [12].
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