nytimes.com
LAREDO, Tex., Jan. 20 - Four months ago, Brenda Cisneros, a community college student, went across the border to Nuevo Laredo to celebrate her 23rd birthday with her best friend, Yvette Martinez, a 27-year-old mother of two small daughters.
They have been missing since.
Gerardo Contreras, 18, a construction worker from San Antonio and father of a small son, has been missing since May, when he went to the Mexican border town of Piedras Negras to attend his sister's baby shower.
Samuel and Gerardo Gonzalez, brothers who are 18 and 24, have been missing since December. Their mother, Rosita, said they last called home from a military checkpoint outside Nuevo Laredo as they returned from a trip to Monterrey.
[snip]
Mexico's drug war has begun to move north of the border. In recent months, fighting among Mexico's most powerful cartels has spawned a wave of violence that at times has turned the streets into battlefields and plazas overtaken by gunmen firing grenades and assault weapons. Mexican law enforcement officials report a sharp rise in killings and kidnappings as cartel leaders struggle for control of this coveted corner of the border. American officials have warned that Mexican drug traffickers with false identification have taken up residence on the United States side of the border.
Posted by Suzanne at January 23, 2005