All is quiet, but border town still paying price for 'peace'

You wouldn't know it these days, but a few years ago Nuevo Laredo was a battlefield for warring drug cartels.

"We'd wake up in the morning and there would be a body here. Next week, there'd be a body down the street," said Jack Suneson.

Suneson owns Marty's, a store that is a favorite with tourists. He remembers those dark days well. We covered the bloodshed back then, but on a recent visit, we were greeted by calm.

Somebody restored peace a shop owner said. But, like most in this city, he won't say it. He won't say that everybody knows the fighting stopped because the Zetas won.
But you can hear about the rise of the drug traffickers chronicled in corridos folk songs. You can also see the group's deadly exploits displayed on YouTube.

In the video and on the streets, the Zetas are now commonly referred to as 'La Compania', and Nuevo Laredo is clearly a company town.
"From vendors, to extortion, kidnappings, murders - everything. Anything they can get some money on, they're going to be involved in," said Robert Garcia of the Laredo Police Dept.

Now that criminal enterprise reaches into the United States.

Garcia has investigated several cases in his own city involving Zetas. For his safety the police department does not want to show his face.

In a police video the detective interrogates a Texas teen, now a convicted murderer, who admitted he worked as a Zeta hitman in the United States. They evolved from being hired gunmen for the Gulf Cartel.

The Zetas deserted their elite military unit to work as enforcers for the Gulf Cartel a decade ago. Mexican authorities say many of the original leaders have been captured or killed.

But the well-armed paramilitary group has only grown stronger, evolving into a cartel that smuggles not just drugs, but weapons and oil stolen from Mexican pipelines. They rule by brute force and fear, extorting protection money from nearly everyone, from street vendors to big businesses.

Authorities say the city government survives only by quietly co-existing with a criminal regime - local news media by censoring themselves.
It is peace at a price in Nuevo Laredo. By  most accounts the Zetas are more entrenched than ever in the border city, a city that is now their stronghold.

Right now Nuevo Laredo is quiet, but the damage has been done.