“On this side, it is different, if you owe them in any way, if you have accommodated them or borrowed money, they will shake you down. If you are outside the system, you are OK. Soon, I think, working in this way they will grow up, they will become licit, rather than illicit, businessmen. But the fact is that no president of any municipality along the border can govern his town without some deal with the Zetas, some form of accommodation,” he said.
Life in Zeta terrain continues. In Reynosa, the first day of this month, Mexico’s Day of the Dead, was a resplendent occasion, families flocking to the cemeteries to clean the graves of their recently deceased, to pay musicians to sing them ballads and to picnic beside the headstones. At an international cultural festival in Matamoros, where most fear to tread, an Irish dancing troupe called Rhythm of the Dance was hugely enjoyed by an audience dressed as though for the opera in Milan. It happened at the Teatro de la Reforma, across the road from a restaurant at the back of which the old-time gangland boss in Matamoros, Juan Guerra, used to preside.
He was a breeder of racehorses and the restaurant has a picture of his favorite horse and Stetson hat on the hoarding. Guerra’s nephew was Juan Garcia Abrego, founder of the modern Gulf Cartel. In honor of Guerra, you suppose, the restaurant is respectfully renamed Don Juan’s. The service is impeccable, but the dead eyes of the man behind the bar terrify, with a glare of steel and ice.
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