Catemaco Kidnap

You guessed it. It's been too damn hot to go anywhere lately and I project that attitude to continue until early June. So, of course, I become prolific.

Mexicans not living in the border areas are generally not concerned with narco killings. In most of the other states, including Veracruz, their pet peeve is extorsion and kidnapping.

An acquaintance/friend of mine operates a branch of one of the larger hardware building supply stores in Los Tuxtlas. He was kidnapped a few years ago and his family paid out a huge sum of pesos. Curiously, most everyone in Catemaco knows who did the job, but they have never been prosecuted.

He now is accompanied by a bodyguard wherever he moves, changed his house with 6 foot fences to a new one with 10 footers, has 3 live-in bodyguards to protect his family 24 hours a day, and has not eaten in a public restaurant in several years.

He says it's a cost of doing business, and he thinks he would have the same problem wherever he might move in Mexico.

Curiously his cost of business is not reflected in his pricing. He is extrordinarily competitive with other chains of building materials, which compared to the US, are robber barons.

Even more curious is that almost all kidnappings are male. Kids and wives are generally immune, except for the recent kidnapping of the mother of a grocery chain owner, by what turned out to be previous employees..

Catemaco is not New York City with dozens of roads leading in and out. Police road blocks and inspections are everywhere. No wonder that locals think that the ones guarding the roads are in cahoots with the kidnappers. Here and everywhere in Mexico.

Even more curious is the absence of newspaper coverage of kidnappings. I would say that possibly one in 5 is reported. And the ones reported rarely have a follow up.  Families of crime victims use the Mexican system of paying to suppress their names in news papers.

That is possibly why there are so many of them in Los Tuxtlas and elsewhere. Where else can you make money by not publishing?

Update: Yesterday 21 March, they found the body of the last local kidnap victim, see Catemaco Diario