As Marc Lacey reported in The Times, Mexico has been struck this week by “a wave of demonstrations protesting the presence of army troops” in towns near the border with the United States, where the authorities have been involved in often heavy fighting with drug traffickers from the powerful Gulf Cartel.

Mexican authorities say that these protests, which temporarily shut down border crossings into Texas from several Mexican towns, were sponsored by the drug cartel. While it is certainly possible that these crowds were rented, watching just two minutes of a dramatic video in a report that ran on Mexican television this week, makes it easy to imagine that civilians living in these towns might be upset by the Mexican government’s decision to militarize the conflict with the drug cartel and put more than 40,000 soldiers on their streets. To put the size of that force in perspective, there are currently 36,000 American troops in all of Afghanistan.

The Spanish-language video report, (which includes graphic images of dead bodies) can be seen on the Web site of the broadcaster Mexicanal and begins with footage of a reporter, Miguel Turriza, describing the gun battle between government forces and the drug traffickers which took place on Tuesday, in broad daylight in the middle of the border town of Reynosa, just across the Rio Grande from south Texas. Later scenes show heavily armed Mexican troops on the town’s streets, and the bodies of several suspected members of the cartel who were killed by the soldiers.

Mexicanal’s footage was also edited into a longer report embedded in an article on the Web site of El Universal, scored with dramatic music and titled, “Reynosa: Zona de Guerra.” El Universal also has a special section on Mexico’s shooting war on drugs, with more Spanish-language articles and video reports.



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The Houston Chronicle’s Lynn Brezosky reported from Reynosa that it was hard to pin down the number of people killed in the fighting on Tuesday which lasted more than an hour:

Pedro Sosa, a chief of the Tamaulipas state police, said one of the dead was a civilian named Jose Alejandro Rivera, who apparently was caught in a crossfire. Sosa said seven gunmen were detained but did not have further details. On Tuesday, reports of injuries and deaths varied widely, with some reporters on the scene saying that as many as 12 people were killed, including five soldiers. The Mexican Defense Department later denied that any soldier had been killed. The firefights occurred in six different sections of the city across the Rio Grande from McAllen, and were attributed to Gulf Cartel struggles to maintain control of a key cocaine trafficking route into South Texas.

Just across the border in McAllen, Tex., Jeremy Roebuck reported in The Monitor that a leader of the Gulf Cartel may have been among the dead in Reynosa:

A top Gulf Cartel leader is believed to be among those killed during violence that broke out across the city Tuesday, U.S. officials said. Mexican federal authorities shot Héctor Manuel Sauceda Gamboa during a firefight at his home on Reynosa’s southwest side. Their raid on the alleged kingpin’s residence triggered the fighting between military forces and cartel gunmen that left at least five dead across the city’s southwest sector, officials said.

More footage of the shooting on Reynosa’s streets Tuesday, and of Mexican troops in the town, has been posted on YouTube.