With almost complete impunity, the Gulf poster expanded its control in Tamaulipas to the point that it operates as an alternative government in the border city of Matamoros. Through this control, all companies, including food vendors, flowers and even beggars, must pay a weekly protection rate to the Gulf poster. The poster operates a massive database of the city’s trade and even uses city officials to collect the funds.
This control is very convenient for local and state politicians who enjoy the kind of narcato that comes from simply allowing the Gulf poster to operate without being disturbed in exchange for maintaining low violence and hiding their presence in the shadows. This control, while currently being overlooked by the Federal Government of Mexico since political allies control Tamaulipas, could mean problems since the Trump administration labeled the Gulf poster as a foreign terrorist organization.
Credit: Breitbart News Foundation / Chronicle Cartel
While this operation fashion is not new in this city, it has expanded drastically in recent months as the Gulf poster and local politicians see to maintain a low profile. At the same time, other posters in Mexico draw national headlines. Despite riding a war of grass with rival features in different cities, Matamoros has greatly avoided large -scale shootings, which gives a false appearance of peace. However, that peace is due to the control that the Gulf poster has about Matamoros, not any government security strategy.
Pay for work
Due to the control of the Gulf poster in the city, anyone who wants to do business needs to pay a regular rate. The flowers, carniceras, corner stores, tire stores, taco trucks, even musicians and DJs are visited by a poster representative or a city employee and are counted on mandatory rates or the “quota”. Payment must be made in cash; However, for medium to large companies, city officials provide a receipt for fiscal purposes.
In the case of a corn seller who sells its product for 30 pesos per cup, you must pay a daily rate or 100 pesos. The owner of a Barbacoa restaurant must pay 3,000 pesos per week. Tire stores that sell their tires for about 500 pesos have to sell 10-12 tires that give them the Gulf poster or pay the difference.
Credit: Breitbart News Foundation / Chronicle Cartel
In the case of product suppliers, certain pharmacies and even flowers, in addition to protection rates, companies must obtain their products from the Gulf poster or their approved suppliers.
This tactic has just moved to large scales manufacturing plants that provide components for US companies. Management in Mexico in some of these companies has been pressed or threatened to open posters suppliers that pay a rate to the organization.
Full silence
“They have a paying calendar in which they sacrificed if they pay months or an annual rate in advance,” said a local catering employee who recently had a wedding event destroyed by armed men for not having used his flowers. “The boss tried to save money and had the flowers sent (instead of buying in the Gulf poster),” he said. “The party duration appeared and broke everything.”
The company’s owner called the local authorities, but no one appeared. The next day, hey to the office of the State Attorney General, where employees told him that they could take their complaint but could not “guarantee their safety” in case the “affected party did something.”
The impunity with which the Gulf poster operates is what keeps the business community silently paying the extortion to avoid any violence. In the past, the only individual who would talk about the extortion of the posters and the city officials who accompanied him was Julio Almanza, the late leader of a local chamber of commerce. In August 2024, a group of gunmen shot and killed Almanza out of his office, Breitbart Texas reported. Before his murder, Almanza presented some of the methods used by the Gulf poster and how Matamoros city officials collected the rates.
Editor’s note: Breitbart News Foundation traveled to Mexico City and the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the posters that silence their communities. The writers would face some death at the hands of the various posters that operate in those areas, including the Gulf and Los Zetas poster, if a pseudonym was not used. Breitbart News Foundation Chronicles poster They are published both in English and their original Spanish. This article was written by “Ja Espinoza” and JC Sánchez “of Tamaulipas.
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