Reynosa Dangerous

A 3 hour shootout that paralyses an entire city. Trucks stolen from car dealership to block all major city streets. "Truckloads" of bodies.  Sound like Afghanistan?  This happened on your border last week and the media won't/can't even report about it.

Reynosa is a Mexican border city of 1.7 million people that sits across from McAllen, Texas about 50 miles West of South Padre Island. In 2010 the New York Times published a feature story that chronicled the de facto news blackout with respect to drug violence within the city.

REYNOSA, Mexico — The big philosophical question in this gritty border town does not concern trees falling in the forest but bodies falling on the concrete: Does a shootout actually happen if the newspapers print nothing about it, the radio and television stations broadcast nothing, and the authorities never confirm that it occurred? Traffickers have gone after the media with a vengeance in these strategic border towns where drugs are smuggled across by the ton. They have shot up newsrooms, kidnapped and killed staff members and called up the media regularly with threats that were not the least bit veiled. Back off, the thugs said. Do not dare print our names. We will kill you the next time you publish a photograph like that.

Fearing Drug Cartels, Reporters in Mexico Retreat

Thing have only gotten worse in the past 3 years. Last Saturday:

REYNOSA — Two SUVs rolled up to a house Tuesday in the Quintas gated community and nearly a dozen men climbed out, sporting assault rifles and body armor.

They kicked open the door and raided the property, while some of the men maintained a perimeter around the block.

Gulf Cartel infighting reignites with Reynosa firefights
The drug gangs are so bold that they literally have their own gang uniforms.

 It may have looked like just another day at the office for a SWAT team, but this wasn’t the police. The lettering on the commandos’ vests read “CDG” for “Cartel Del Golfo.”

The gang was there to execute a hit order on Michael “Gringo” Villarreal(the cartel equivalent of an early retirement party).

“An order was given to erase everything and everyone that had ties to El Gringo,” said a source outside law enforcement with direct knowledge of criminal activity in Tamaulipas. “The estacas (foot soldiers) have been told to kill them and keep the loot — cars, guns, money, whatever.”

The gunman went to 6 local car dealerships and stole over 20 cars in order to block the main thoroughfares throughout the city. The cartel body count apparently exceeded three dozen but is impossible to confirm because the Mexican Government won't confirm the incident.
The most shocking part about this incident is the refusal of the American Media to cover this issue. A Google New search of "Reynosa" only results in 3 news stories on the shootout (one from the paper the Rio Grande Monitor and two from television sites) I have been following the drug war in Mexico for years and I was shocked at this violence, how shocked would the average person on the street be? 
The War on Drugs has been extremely costly socially here at home. But in out of sight, out of mind Mexico it has directly resulted in over 50,000 deaths and the complete breakdown of government in the North where there might as well be a civil war going on. Is this really all worth the cost?