Texans worry Mexican violence will cross border

10:51 AM CST on Sunday, January 13, 2008

Associated Press

HOUSTON -- Deadly gun battles in two Mexican border cities last week left their sister communities in the Rio Grande Valley hoping that the brutal cross-border violence plaguing Nuevo Laredo for years had not spread downstream permanently.

Five people died in fierce firefights between suspected Gulf Cartel gunmen and Mexican troops and federal agents in Rio Bravo and Reynosa.

Those cities sit just across the Rio Grande from lucrative havens for so-called Winter Texans, setting the multi-billion dollar drug trade on a collision course with a growing tourism industry.

“We’re very concerned that the Mexican military controls its violence,” said Hidalgo County Judge J.D. Salinas. “I stopped going across (the border) to have lunch years back.”

Salinas said he now routinely declines invitations from his counterpart in Reynosa to attend events there.