Cartel gunmen continued to carry out numerous killings throughout the Mexican state of Tamaulipas while government officials shamelessly claimed crime had dropped and that impunity had ended.
This week, Tamaulipas Public Safety Office Spokesman Jorge Cuellar Montoya made a series of outlandish comments before news outlets claiming that under the current administration, the violence in Tamaulipas had virtually ended, that crimes, in general, had decreased to a very low level, and that impunity had ended in the state.
Soon after Cuellar made the propagandist claims, a group of gunmen carried out two separate targeted killings in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas. One of the killings took place in the Rincon de Las Montanas neighborhood when a group of gunmen shot and killed 25-year-old Angel Modesto Ruiz Guerra and also injured 46-year-old Juan Carlos Martinez Zuniga. Authorities revealed to Breitbart Texas that the gunmen used .223 and .40 caliber ammunition for the attack, pointing to the use of at least one AR-type rifle and a handgun.
Tamaulipas authorities block of an area moments after a cartel killing in Ciudad Victoria. (Credit: Breitbart Texas / Cartel Chronicles
Hours later, unknown gunmen carried out a second attack. This time, it was right outside a popular shopping plaza called Paseo Mendez. In that attack, the gunmen used AR-style rifles to kill an unidentified man.
Cuellar Montoya is the same public official who, in June, claimed that the U.S. Department of State had published erroneous information when the U.S. Consulate in Matamoros issued a travel alert about gunmen stopping passenger buses in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, and kidnapping U.S. citizens and residents. As Breitbart Texas reported, U.S. diplomats sent the travel alert after having several incidents where relatives had to pay thousands of dollars in ransom for their release. One of those cases found its way to a Texas court as a family that had been kidnapped sued the bus company that was offering bus travel from McAllen into Mexico and claimed the route was safe, Breitbart Texas reported.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at [email protected].
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