A Texas man and a friend he was traveling with in Mexico died when their vehicle exploded after driving over a cartel landmine. The fatal explosion comes after Breitbart Texas reported on prior explosions where innocents sustained injuries. The report forced Mexico’s government to confirm the issue and send out a series of notices warning locals about the use of cartel landmines on dirt roads in Tamaulipas.
The fatal explosion took place on Friday, when 70-year-old Brownsville, Texas, resident Jesus Antonio Cespedes Saldierna traveled in a Ford pickup with Texas license plates. The Texan traveled with his two friends, 60-year-old Horacio Lopez Pena and 50-year-old Ninfa Griselda Ortega Lucio, who are believed to be Mexican nationals. The vehicle was moving along a dirt road that connects the rural communities of Guadalupe Victoria and Santa Rita in the municipality of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, when it drove over an explosive device. The device had been planted by cartel gunmen as part of an ongoing turf war with rival forces.
The blast killed Cespedes and Lopez while causing serious injuries to Ortega. Emergency personnel rushed the woman to a local hospital as authorities documented the scene of the explosion.
Mexican government officials have tried to hide the identity of the victims in order to avoid drawing attention to the fact that a U.S. citizen died from a cartel explosion. However, Mexican law enforcement sources provided Breitbart Texas with exclusive information from the case.
As Breitbart Texas reported, the northern part of Tamaulipas is ground zero for a fierce turf war between rival factions of the Gulf Cartel. The turf war is mainly between the Metros faction from Reynosa and the Escorpiones faction based in Matamoros. San Fernando is controlled by a criminal organization called Old School Zetas or Sierra Fox, which has sided with Los Metros to take on the Escorpiones.
This week, the Tamaulipas government distributed a series of flyers warning about cartel landmines following a Breitbart Texas report about an explosion last week. That landmine injured two workers from Mexico’s National Water Commission (CONAGUA) in an area between Rio Bravo and Reynosa.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to Mexico City and the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and their original Spanish. This article was written by “Francisco Morales” and “J.A. Espinoza” from Tamaulipas.
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