Mexican business leader is killed in border town after complaining about cartel extorsions on TV

SEATTLE - The head of business chambers' federation in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas was killed just hours after giving television interviews complaining about drug cartel extortion. Julio Almanza was shot to death outside his offices in the city of Matamoros, just across the border city of Brownsville, Texas.

"We are hostages to extortion demands, we are hostages to criminal groups," Almanza said in one of his last interviews. "Charging extortion payments has practically become the national sport in Tamaulipas," he added, in reference to money demanded by criminal groups in exchange for "protection."

Almanza's comments came in response to a recent issue with the Femsa corporation, which operates Mexico's largest chain of convenience stores called Oxxo, who announced late last week that due to gang problems, they would be closing all of its 191 stores and seven gas stations in the city of Nuevo Laredo. Femsa argues that they had long dealt with cartel demands that its gas stations buy their fuel from certain distributors.

Most recently, cartel members abducted two store employees, demanding Oxxo stores to act as lookouts or provide information to the gang. In a statement released on July 29, Femsa said its stores in Nuevo Laredo will remain closed this week "due to acts of violence that put our colleagues' safety at risk."

"We had incidents in stores that consisted of them (gangs) demanding we give them certain information, and they even abducted two colleagues to enforce this demand," Roberto Campa, Femsa's director of corporate affairs, told local newspaper La Jornada.

But Almanza's death is not an isolated case. Early in July, unidentified gunmen killed Minerva Pérez, head of Baja California's fishing industry chamber, in what state prosecutors described as a direct assassination attack after Pérez complained of drug cartel extortion and illegal fishing.

Just like Femsa, criminal organizations are starting to hit larger companies nationwide. This week, the American Chamber of Commerce, whose members tend to be larger Mexican, American or multinational corporations, released a survey in which 12% of respondents said that "organized crime has taken partial control of the sales, distribution and/or pricing of their goods."

About half of the 218 companies in the survey said that trucks carrying their products had suffered attacks, while 45% of the companies said they had received extortion demands for protection payments.

Femsa said in a statement that it was making progress in talks with authorities that might provide guarantees for the safety of its employees and allow the chain to reopen its stores in Nuevo Laredo. In response, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador displayed the recommendations authorities had made to Femsa in a meeting on July 29. The recommendations largely placed the responsibility on the company, asking it to hire in-store security guards, install panic buttons and place cameras outside stores.