Latavia McGee is one of many Americans who have sought cosmetic surgery south of the border. She and three friends met gunfire and a chaotic abduction that left two of them dead.
Within minutes of riding into Mexico in a rented white minivan last month, Latavia McGee knew that she was lost.
She and three of her closest friends — close enough that she called them brothers — had driven from South Carolina to Matamoros in the state of Tamaulipas so that she could get a tummy tuck procedure. It was a journey she had made once before, as part of a wave of American women seeking cosmetic surgery across the border.
But this time, she was running late, had no phone service and had veered off course, Ms. McGee recalled in a recent interview. She was struggling to remember where the clinic was supposed to be.
Also in the wayward van were Zindell Brown, Shaeed Woodard and Eric Williams, old companions with whom she had grown up in South Carolina. That morning in Mexico, they had been enjoying one another’s company, Ms. McGee said, as Mr. Brown, the best Spanish speaker of the four, asked strangers for directions.
Then gunshots rang out, and the friends found themselves caught in the crossfire of a Mexican cartel. Mr. Brown 28, and Mr. Woodard, 33, would be killed, and Ms. McGee, 34, and Mr. Williams, 38, would spend four days in captivity, with the dead bodies of their friends beside them.
The deadly encounter drew international attention, highlighting the relentless violence that the Mexican government has failed to contain and bringing Republican criticism of the Biden administration for not doing enough to confront cartels across the border. Though the episode is still being investigated, officials have said that they believed the friends were taken by mistake: criminals in Mexico do not usually target Americans. Two days after Ms. McGee and Mr. Williams were released, five bound men were found by the Mexican authorities with a letter, purportedly from a powerful cartel, blaming them for the attack on the Americans.
The two survivors are only now beginning to speak publicly about their ordeal, as they continue to cope with the physical and emotional aftermath, which has left Mr. Williams using a wheelchair. In an interview with The New York Times, they described confused captors and gutsy escape attempts before they were released, and they provided more details about what drew them to Mexico.
Ms. McGee, who lives in Myrtle Beach, S.C., first had cosmetic surgery in Matamoros about two years ago, she said, and was returning for another procedure. She saw it as a form of self care after having six children. “It wasn’t that I was self-conscious, because I always thought I was beautiful,” she said. “I wanted to do it, so I saved my money, and I went.”
While her path across the border was risky, it was also well worn. Experts who track the practice known as medical tourism say that tens of thousands of U.S. residents, most of them women, make the trip every year in search of body-sculpting operations that are cheaper than what they can find at home. Despite the experience of Ms. McGee and her companions, the trend shows no sign of slowing.
