According to the Council for Law and Human Rights (CLDH), an average of 49 kidnappings occurred every day in Mexico in 2011, with a total of 17,889 abductions last year. That staggering number represents a 32 percent increase from the previous year.
About one-third of the kidnappers arrested last year had ties to the drug cartels.
However, that figure does not include so-called “express kidnappings,” in which the victim is only held hostage for a short time, usually a few hours. The victim is abducted and forced to withdraw money from an ATM, or their family is asked for ransom money before being released.
The CLDH reports that hundreds of these types of abductions take place in Mexico City on a daily basis.
In March, Veronica Perez Rodriguez, an archeologist at Northern Arizona University, fell victim to an express kidnapping while visiting her mother in Juarez.
Rodriguez was kidnapped in the Fuentes del Valle neighborhood along Manuel Gomez Avenue.
According to the Chihuahua state prosecutor's office, “the moment she left her family's house she was intercepted by armed men and deprived of her liberty.”
Fortunately, Rodriguez was released unharmed.
Unfortunately, cartel kidnappings are becoming a fact of life in the United States as well.
-In August 2010, an 18-year-old woman was reunited with her family, 19 hours after she was abducted in San Juan, Texas. The victim, whose name was withheld, was walking to a friend’s house when a black van pulled up beside her and three men jumped out and forced her into the vehicle.
According to San Juan Police Chief Juan Gonzalez, the woman was blindfolded and driven back across the border to Reynosa, where she was eventually left in a field.
The assailants quickly began calling her family, demanding ransom in exchange for her release. FBI agents and Hidalgo County sheriff’s deputies negotiated with her abductors.
Realizing that the woman’s family could not pay, they tossed her out of their vehicle.
Fortunately, the girl had a cell phone which the kidnappers did not find.
Chief Gonzalez said: “The kidnappers somehow missed it that she had a cell phone. We were able to keep communicating with her.”
Gonzalez reported that while several U.S. law enforcement agencies searched for the woman, Mexican authorities were never contacted out of fear of dealing with that country’s corrupt police officials. In fact, Chief Gonzalez said they were worried Mexican law enforcement may have even been connected to the abduction.
The girl was eventually found, covered in dirt but apparently unharmed.
Sadly, she encountered several people while in Mexico, asking them for help. Gonzalez said: “People that she came across didn’t want to help. People are living in fear in Mexico.”
-In November 2009, a McAllen, Texas man was taken at gunpoint from a Starbucks Coffee store and driben back to Reynosa. The kidnappers demanded $30,000 in ransom from the man’s family. The man was later found bound and beaten.
-In August 2008, Reuters reported on an American businesswoman identified only as “Veronica,“ who had been kidnapped a few months earlier. As she was exiting her car in California, two men forced her into the passenger seat at gunpoint, then shoved her teenaged daughter into the back seat and took the pair to Mexico.
The kidnappers drove through the border checkpoint in San Diego, bringing the mother and daughter to Tijuana. The two were held captive for a month until their family paid a ransom of $100,000.
Veronica said of her experience: “We got an automatic green light to go through Mexican customs and then we were blindfolded and taken to a house in Tijuana. They held a pistol to my stomach all the time we were in the car.”
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