Category Archives: Cameron
Cameron County is the southernmost county located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2010 census, its population was 406,220. Its county seat is Brownsville. Cameron was founded in 1848. Cameron is named for Captain Ewen Cameron, a soldier during the Texas Revolution and in the ill-fated Mier Expedition.
Zetas gang threatens Mexico’s shale gas near border
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico — The brutal Zetas gang poses one of the most daunting challenges to the development of Mexico’s abundant shale gas reserves near the Texas border.
The gas fields extend from the booming Eagle Ford play of South Texas deep into the ranch and coal country stretching inland from this violent border city. This is Zetas country, among the most fearsome of Mexico’s criminal badlands.
U.S. and Mexican energy companies long have been besieged by the gangsters here – their workers assaulted, extorted or murdered – despite a heavy military and federal police presence. Now, with feuding Zetas factions bloodying one another and fending off outside rivals, what has been a bad situation threatens to get much worse.
Northern Mexico’s gas production has suffered for years as gangland threats or attacks have kept workers from servicing the wellheads, pipelines and drilling rigs in the Burgos Basin, the territory between the Rio Grande and the city of Monterrey, which now provides up to 20 percent of Mexico’s natural gas.
“Petroleos Mexicanos has problems with security … principally in Burgos,” Guillermo Dominguez, a senior member of the National Hydrocarbons Commission, told the Mexico City newspaper Reforma.
And now the surging Zetas bloodletting pits the gang’s top bosses – Heriberto Lazcano and Miguel Angel Treviño – against Ivan Velazquez, a former underling known as “El Taliban.” From his base in the western state of Zacatecas, Velazquez reportedly has allied with the remnants of other gangs to launch a challenge for control of Coahuila state, which holds most of the shale gas reserves.
Challenge to control
Banners recently hung by both Zetas factions have accused one another of treason and other transgressions that will be avenged with death. Fighting has rattled Nuevo Laredo, the Zetas stronghold that also is the busiest land port for U.S.-Mexico trade, killing scores this month alone.
Still more banners appeared in Nuevo Laredo Tuesday, reputedly written by beleaguered civilians, promising all the gangster factions further bloody vengeance.
“Zetas are pretty much in control, but they have been challenged,” said a U.S. official in Mexico who monitors the situation, speaking on condition of anonymity. “You have all these groups fighting one another, shifting alliances and internal fights … It’s a wilderness of mirrors.”
The Zetas’ spats with rivals already have turned Coahuila’s other large cities – Torreon in the west, Monclova in the center and Saltillo in the east – into fierce gangland battlegrounds. State officials are blaming the Sept. 17 escape of 131 prisoners from a Piedras Negras prison on the Zetas seeking to replenish their ranks for new battles.
The insecurity in Mexico’s gas fields contrasts sharply with the drilling and production frenzy seizing the ranchlands just north of the border. Oil field pickups and semi-trailer fuel tankers choke Highway 83, the once-desolate ranch-country highway that cuts northwest from Laredo though the lower reaches of the Eagle Ford.
Some 6,000 drilling permits have been issued for Eagle Ford shale in Texas, and 550 wells are producing there. By comparison, Pemex so far has drilled five exploratory shale gas wells, but hopes to drill 170 more in the next four years. The company plans to spend $200 million on exploration in the short term.
Those first exploratory wells have been drilled to the west of Nuevo Laredo and below the border at Piedras Negras, ranch and coal country that remains relatively violence free for now. But that tranquility may owe more to the now-threatened dominance of the Zetas bosses than to rule of law.
“They are in control,” said a U.S. official. “They are pretty much just doing their thing.”
Workers disappearing
At least eight Pemex and contract employees vanished in May 2010 near a gas facility near Falcon Lake, territory under the Zetas’ firm control. Last March, two men working for a Mexican company doing contract work for Houston-based Halliburton disappeared outside Piedras Negras.
Halliburton spokeswoman Tara Mullee-Agard said employees get regular security briefings, but the company declined to comment on the contractors’ disappearance.
“Many companies that were active in the areas have stopped until Pemex or the government can provide security,” said an employee of one Reynosa-based company. “In places where there have been incidents we don’t operate anymore. When darkness falls, we stop wherever we are.
Related articles
- Zetas crimping gas industry in northern Mexico (mysanantonio.com)
- Banners claim an alliance has been formed against the Zetas (mysanantonio.com)
- Mexico: State Officials Killed in Nuevo Laredo (hispanicallyspeakingnews.com)
- Piedras Negras “megafuga” just the latest massive prison break (mysanantonio.com)
- 132 inmates escape from Mexican prison near U.S. border (theprovince.com)
South Texas prosecutor Armando Villalobos indicted for bribery, plans run for Congress
Police Monday arrested Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos and his former law partner following their indictment as part of an investigation into bribery that felled former District Judge Abel Limas.
Villalobos, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress in the newly created 34th District, and Eddie Lucio were charged in connection with a federal investigation into Limas’ accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes for favorable judicial rulings, Associated Press is reporting.
According to the story, officials for the US. Attorney’s office in Houston declined to discuss precisely the charges against Villalobos and Lucio. Villalobos had earlier in the day acknowledged to reporters he was being investigated by federal authorities, but declined to discuss the charges against him.
Villallobos told reporters he had no intention of stepping away from his job as district attorney, nor would he suspend his congressional campaign.
Limas, who served as a district judge from 2001 to 2008, pleaded guilty more than a year ago to racketeering charges involving five others, a wide-range of illegal judicial fixes and payoffs of at least $340,000.
As part of his plea, Limas agreed to a forfeiture of more than $250,000. His sentencing, postponed several times, has been pushed back to August.
Related articles
- Cameron County District Attorney Armando R. Villalobos Is Indicted; Feds Say He Ran His Office as a Criminal RICO Enterprise (lesliebrodie.wordpress.com)
- South Texas DA charged with extortion, fraud (kansascity.com)
- Petition to remove indicted prosecutor from office (click2houston.com)
- Texas DA in racketeering scandal urged to resign (kansascity.com)
- Cameron DA faces bribery charges (mysanantonio.com)
Continents of the World
Mb50's "Liquid Mud" Rant 