Borderline Psychosis Update- More Freshwater Piracy at Falcon Lake; Mexican Authorities Tread Cautiously in Cartel-Held Territory

A Colorado man is missing and presumed dead after he and his wife were attacked and pursued by smugglers in the waters on the Mexican side of Falcon Reservoir along the Texas/Mexico border.

According to a second, more comprehensive statement to Mexican investigators, Tiffany Young-Hartley, 29, said that she and her husband David Hartley, 30, were accosted by gunmen in three small boats as they were sightseeing along the Reservoir on separate jet skis on September 30. The gunmen opened fire, striking David as the couple fled according to her statement. Both Hartley and his jet-ski have been missing since then.

Mexican investigators were initially skeptical of Young-Hartley's account.

Only ranchers and steers populate the abandoned and partially submerged ruins, as well as a handful of anglers who remain along the Salado river, which flows into Falcon Reservoir. None told investigators they heard anything Thursday while out on the quiet waters.

“How would someone know where the incident occurred?” asked Rolando Armando Flores Villegas, the Tamaulipas State Police commander. “That place is very unsafe. Nobody lives there — only organized criminals. That’s their land.”

Flores has received reports of attacks on Falcon Reservoir, he said. But no one has alleged anything close to what Young-Hartley reported to authorities.

“Since everything is so calm over there, they could hear any noise,” Flores said of the anglers and ranchers in that area. “But they said they didn’t hear any gunshots or anything — and they didn’t even hear a Jet Ski.”

The case took an even more sinister turn last week when commander Flores' severed head was dropped off in a suitcase in front of a Mexican military base at nearby Miguel Aleman. Since then, authorities have suspended the search for Hartley's body.

Investigators in the USA and Mexico and a Texas-based national security think tank believe that the couple was initially mistaken for rival smugglers by the gunmen that accosted them.

ELSEWHERE: The Los Angeles Times accompanied a detachment of heavily armed Mexican police officers who were tasked with delivering US$40,000 in pension and back-pay to senior citizens living in remote towns and pueblas in Sonora.

This was necessary because the region is increasingly cut off from the rest of the country due to a struggle for territorial control between two of Mexico's cartels- the Beltran-Leyva and Sinaloa. Gunmen from the Beltran-Leyva cartel had taken over a string of ranches and pueblas between Altar, Sonora and the Arizona border 50 miles to the north. In retaliation, the Sinaloa Cartel has been patiently and methodically cutting off the area from the rest of the country, choking off food, mail and fuel deliveries to their rivals and an estimated 5,000 residents in the reigon.

I'm not a fan of the LA Times, but read the whole thing. Aside from the high profile and brazen acts of violence in places like Juarez or the grisly discoveries of mass graves in Taxco or Monterrey, the besieged villages in northern Sonora are an example of how the cartels are able to control vast tracts of rural land to expedite their lucrative human and drug smuggling routes.