But not now. And the current news blackout along the border has only amplified fears, as false rumors of impending shootouts circulate unchecked, prompting many parents to pull their children from school and businesses to close.

It means that a mother can huddle on the floor of a closet with her daughter for what seems like eternity as fierce gunfire is exchanged outside their home, as occurred here recently, and then find not a word of it in the next day’s paper.

And it means that helicopters can swoop overhead, military vehicles can roar through the streets and the entire neighborhood can sound like a war movie, and television can lead off the next day’s broadcast talking about something else. Even some authorities, including Mayor Óscar Lubbert of Reynosa, acknowledge that without news reports, it is harder for them to get a full picture of how much blood is spilled overnight, partly because the traffickers sometimes haul their dead comrades away before the sun comes up.

The violence was so fearsome last month that the American Embassy in Mexico City temporarily closed the consular agency in Reynosa, which offers assistance to Americans, many of whom manage the hundreds of manufacturing plants based here. Closed on Feb. 24, the office reopened on March 8 after a lull in the bloodshed, which has continued sporadically in recent days with clashes between traffickers and the police.

What remains unclear is whether the combatants have called it quits or are merely reloading for more battles to come.

Rarely, if ever, do the local news media mention the names of the groups engaged in combat or their top leadership. The Texas press broke the story that the Drug Enforcement Administration traced the upsurge in violence in Reynosa to Jan. 18, when a member of the Gulf Cartel killed a top lieutenant of the rival Zeta gang named Victor Mendoza. The Zetas, founded by former members of the Mexican special forces and known for both their organization and their brutality, demanded the shooter. The Gulf Cartel, which once used the Zetas as enforcers but now vows to eliminate them, refused.