Texans Near Border See Signs That Violence Is Closing In

With violent deaths and crime becoming commonplace, the border resembles the Wild West again.

Violence on the southern border is usually associated with human and narcotics trafficking. People living in the shadow of the Mexican border live with the fear that at any moment violence from Mexico will spill over. Entrants fleeing from poverty, discrimination, and this same violence often perpetrate property crimes, i.e. "living off the land," on residents, and sometimes kidnappings, rapes, and murders occur.

"When the people who wear uniforms are as bad as the drug dealers, who do you trust? No one's safe."

ZAPATA, Texas - (KRT) - Just three miles from the Zapata County Courthouse, Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez steers his truck off the pavement onto a twisting dirt road lined with mesquite and thorny brush as tall as a man. He points to Mexico, shimmering in the heat across a narrow spit of Lake Falcon.

"You can cross all day by boat and no one's going to see you. When the lake's down, you can almost drive across," Gonzalez said. "Drug loads come through here all the time. If they can boat marijuana bales, they can bring terrorists across the lake.

"It's no longer a question of when the violence is going to bleed over to Zapata. The narco-terrorist culture is already here. We're just worried it's going to get worse."

The explosion of drug killings and kidnappings that has wracked Nuevo Laredo, 50 miles upriver, resonates all too clearly in this sun-baked county of 16,000.

Zapata County residents who have lived all their lives in the shadow of Mexico now refuse to drive over to shop or see doctors because of the violence.

But for some, the threat of violence comes calling.

One Zapata businessman was threatened with kidnapping recently. And an influx of hundreds of Mexican citizens into Zapata over the past few years prompts Gonzalez to fear his town is becoming a safe haven for drug dealers and their hired guns, including members of the notorious Gulf cartel's enforcers, Los Zetas.

"We've seen a 35 percent increase in population over the past four or five years and they're all coming from Mexico," Gonzalez said. "They don't have jobs here, but they're building homes and buying new cars. They stay out of trouble, but you drive around and wonder who the hell they are and why they came to Zapata."

In much-larger Laredo, Texas, the brutality of the drug gangs already is tangible. Mayor Betty Flores blamed two recent deaths - people gunned down in Laredo businesses in broad daylight - on spillover violence.

Gonzalez's biggest fear is the possibility of terrorists taking refuge in the remote region, and the vulnerability of a network of natural gas lines that feeds the 294 billion cubic feet of natural gas produced in Zapata County each year for facilities in Houston.

"This county is the third largest producer of natural gas in the state, and it's no secret," he said. "An attack on the lines would be disastrous."

At the White House Restaurant, a group of old friends sit at their front table, drinking coffee and passing the morning. This day, their conversation centers on the troubles in Nuevo Laredo after drug gangs assassinated the police chief recently, barely six hours after he was sworn in.

There has always been an air of risk along the border, but the recent violence has upped the ante dramatically. Mexican authorities account for 60 people murdered in drug-gang killings in Nuevo Laredo since January. The FBI reports that drug gangs have kidnapped 32 Americans.

Even after the Mexican army arrived in Nuevo Laredo to restore order and weed out bad police officers, the drug killings continued with the shooting deaths of two people.

"It's a dangerous time. Over there, the police will stop you for any little thing, especially if you have a Texas license plate," said Hector Lopez, 78, a retired justice of the peace. "If you pay their bribe, your problems go away."

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A spotlight is on the border. Al-Jazeera, the Muslim broadcasting company with an anti-American bias, is coming to do an exposé on border violence and the ease with which ANYONE can cross over.