Human rights activists and relatives in the violent Mexican border town of New Laredoacross from Laredo, Texas, blamed the deaths of a nurse and an 8-year-old girl on the Army and National Guard troops.
Relatives said this weekend that the victims had apparently been caught in firefights with suspected drug cartel vehicles pursued by military patrols. Nuevo Laredo has long been dominated by the ruthless Northeast Cartel, an offshoot of the old Zetas gang.
The Nuevo Laredo Human Rights Committee, an activist group, said in a statement Sunday that another civilian was killed during another military car chase in the city. The National Guard is a military force trained and directed by the Department of Defense.
Civil prosecutors in the border state of Tamaulipas — where Nuevo Laredo is located — declined to confirm or deny the three separate incidents that occurred Friday and Saturday. Federal prosecutors and the Department of Defense did not respond to requests for comment.
If the shooting deaths are confirmed, it would be the second time in two weeks that Mexican military forces have killed civilians. It would also bring to three the number of children or adolescents killed in incidents involving military forces: an 11-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy were among six migrants killed, apparently by soldiers, on October 1 in the country. State of Chiapas, in the south of the country.
The first incident in Nuevo Laredo occurred Friday evening when a nurse, her husband and their son found themselves on a road where soldiers were pursuing the suspects’ vehicles.
The deceased’s husband, Víctor Carrillo Martínez, told the local press that “there was a clash” and that his wife died “in the crossfire”.
At that point, he said the soldiers passed the family’s vehicle but did nothing to help them. “They left as if nothing happened,” Carrillo Martínez said.
The Rights Committee said the 46-year-old nurse suffered a gunshot wound to the head. Her husband said medical staff told him “they were high caliber bullets used by soldiers.”
The next day, Saturday, an eight-year-old girl and her grandmother were driving to a stationery store when they were caught in the middle of a chase in which National Guard soldiers or officers were chasing suspects .
The grandmother told reporters that a military vehicle was chasing an SUV; his car got stuck between the two and the soldiers opened fire.
“When I looked, the car was covered in blood,” the grandmother recalled. “I looked at the girl and said, ‘She’s bleeding’.”
“I screamed, I screamed at the soldiers, but since they didn’t want to stop, they didn’t help me,” she said.
The grandmother described them as soldiers, but her daughter said they were National Guard officers.
The confusion is understandable; The National Guard was established in 2019 under a putative civilian command, but it was largely recruited from military ranks and received military training. In September, control of the force was transferred to the military, and they generally wear military uniforms.
The commission said that in a third case, the tortured body of a young man was found in a truck pursued by the army and National Guard; no weapons were found in the vehicle.
“No one wants to touch the military”
Former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who left office on September 30, gave the military an unprecedented role in public life and law enforcement; he created the militarized Guard and used the combined military forces as the country’s primary law enforcement, supplanting the police.
But critics say the military is not trained to handle civilian law enforcement work.
The military has been implicated in previous killings in Nuevo Laredo, where street shootings are not uncommon. In 2023, the Defense Department said 16 soldiers would be tried on military charges related to the killing of five men in Nuevo Laredo that year.
The killing of five men on May 18, 2023, was captured on security camera footage so graphic that even López Obrador described it as an apparent “execution.”
JASIEL RUBIO / REUTERS
The chairman of the rights commission, Raymundo Ramos, said that “the armed forces continue to have very extensive powers, very strong and superior to any civilian authority.”
“It seems like no one wants to touch the military in this country,” Ramos said.
In November 2022, gunshots in Nuevo Laredo forced the cancellation of classes and a notice from the U.S. consulate to shelter in place. Earlier that year, the The United States authorized the departure families and some consulate staff after drug cartel gunmen shot at the consulate building.
The first shootings under the new president Claudia Sheinbaum occurred on October 1 – Sheinbaum’s first day in office – near the town of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala. The area is often used by migrant smugglers, but warring drug cartels also operate in the area.
Soldiers claimed to have heard “bangs” and opened fire on a truck carrying migrants from Egypt, Nepal, Cuba, India, Pakistan and El Salvador. Six migrants were killed and ten were injured.
Sheinbaum pledged to stick to her predecessor’s strategy of “hugs, not bullets” of using social policy to attack the root of crime.
“The war on drugs will not come back,” the left-wing president said at a news conference this month, referring to the U.S.-backed offensive launched in 2006.
AFP contributed to this report.
