mysanantonio.com
RIO BRAVO, Texas -- Empty cocaine packages littered the tall grass like candy wrappers along the bank of the Rio Grande in El Cenizo, a small but growing city 15 miles southeast of Laredo.
On closer inspection, each of the 30 or so packages revealed layers — foil, plastic kitchen wrap and brown packing tape. Two large flour sacks were discarded nearby, each with a car seatbelt ingeniously tied diagonally across it for no-hassle transporting.
The drugs were long gone, their wrappings not just evidence of a successful crime but another artifact in an outdoor museum of discarded clothes, inner tubes and water jugs left behind by river crossers.
Narcotics trafficking in South Texas is nothing new, but the relative isolation and limited police resources of El Cenizo and neighboring Rio Bravo, officials say, have created opportunities for smugglers to exploit.
The same drug cartels that have waged a bloody turf war in Nuevo Laredo are using both places as staging areas into Texas, officials say.
Posted by Tyne at July 31, 2006