Drought and violence plague Nuevo León
Digital illustration created for Ojalá © Elisa María M.V.
Reportage • Chantal Flores • April 17, 2025 • Leer en castellano
From Highway 54 in Nuevo León, Mexico, around 70 kilometers south of the United States border, you can catch a glimpse of the Picachos mountains. Scrub brush and mesquite trees spread out by the wayside, above, songbirds soar through the sky. Roadrunners dart past the semi-trucks that roll through daily, loaded with limestone mined in Picachos.
Local authorities and business people promote Highway 54 as the shortest commercial and tourist corridor between Nuevo León and Texas, in an effort to boost trade between Mexico and its northern neighbor. But organized crime and violence have been increasingly present here since 2011, leaving towns along Highway 54 and its many sideroads abandoned in the wake of threats of extortion, land seizures, and disappearances.
Part of the state's strategy to stop organized crime from Tamaulipas from encroaching into Nuevo León has been to build a new military base in Cerralvo, adding a stream of soldiers to local highway traffic.
The new 27th Motorized Cavalry Regiment in Cerralvo is a sprawling construction site that includes five residential buildings that can house 600 soldiers. The military base, run by the Secretary of Defense, partially opened in August 2024 but was officially inaugurated this year.
For decades, local residents have built their lives on both sides of the border, but many decided to stay in the United States as organized crime gained control over the area. Those with fewer economic resources opted to leave for the outskirts of greater Monterrey.
After sunset, trucks and armed men fill the highways and backroads that connect to the border. As locals do their best to stay indoors—authorities recommend using highways only during daylight hours—gunmen move freely through communities such as Martinitos and San Vicente, in the municipality of Los Herreras.
Unlike many of his neighbors, Aristeo Benavides returned from the US to his hometown of San Vicente, on Highway 5, which connects Los Herrera to Cerralvo and then to Highway 54. After his father's death, it fell on him to help his mother with the ranch.
After feeling how his house’s windows shook as the limestone mining company called Materiales Triturados Martinez (Matrimar) set off explosion after explosion on the mountain, and saw how the local water source was slowly depleting, Benavides became one of the leading environmental defenders of the Sierra de Picachos. He’s also an active participant in his local ejido— the Benavides Grande and Benavides Olivares communal landowners association.
"I've been busting their balls for 10 years now, and I’m still here. A lot of people tell me, ‘They're going to kill you, they're going to disappear you.’ So far, nothing’s happened to me," said Benavides in an interview at his home in February. "When you run out of water, you also die. But it's a slow, drawn-out death."
A quarry in a Natural Protected Area
For more than 40 years, the Benavides family has been raising goats, which remains one of the main agricultural activities in the area. While in previous years the family kept 300 goats, water shortages in recent years have cut their herd by half.
“Tomato, beans, alfalfa, potatoes, lots of cows, everything. We used to be a very productive ranch,” said Benavides, pointing to the dry fields behind his house. “Now we don't have enough water, you can see the hoses there.”
Benavides told Ojalá that the shortage was not only caused by the recent drought in northeastern Mexico. He and others from neighboring communities blame Matrimar: the company’s operations have affected the Agualeguas-Los Ramones basin and the streams that feed communal wells.
“Our well was eight meters deep. Now, we have had to dig up to 20 meters to get water,” said Benavides. “How can you let a company damage the watershed that supplies water to three municipalities?”
Margarita García, a biologist with the Ideas Center of the Ecological Association of the Sierra de Picachos (AESPAC), says the mountain range is crucial for the aquifer’s replenishment. She points out the rich biodiversity: Pichachos is home to black bears, mountain lions, golden eagles, and endangered Mexican wolves, among others. A 2023 Supreme Court ruling finally established the Sierra de Picachos as a Natural Protected Area. But important sections were excluded from that protection, including those where Matrimar is currently operating.
"The Natural Protected Area was decreed, but there has been no change. The environmental damage continues," said Benavides. “Last May, I filed a complaint with the Secretary of the Environment about deforestation happening on the edge of the Sierra de Picachos, in two Natural Protected Areas.”
Matrimar is owned by José Santos Martínez Gutiérrez, a Mexican businessman. The company uses dynamite to extract construction materials. Despite the dust, noise pollution, and stress this can cause to local fauna, Matrimar’s activities are overseen by the Secretary of National Defense—not the Secretary of the Environment.
“The limits for explosions, the amount of explosives, everything that we’re seeing is not under our regulations, but under the regulations of the Secretary of National Defense,” said Alfonso Martinez, Nuevo León’s Secretary of the Environment, in an interview with Ojalá.
For years, residents have complained that the fine dust released by Matrimar’s operations is causing them respiratory diseases. In 2019, the community of Mojarras, which is in Doctor González, fought against the arrival of the quarry. Benavides blasted Martínez Gutiérrez for putting his granddaughter on the local ejido council in an attempt to legitimize the takeover of communal lands.
Blanca was among the local residents who joined the protests, in large part due to her children’s asthma.
"With so much dust, the children get sick,” said Blanca, who preferred not to use her full name for fear of reprisals. “They even offered me a house in Monterrey to put up the stone quarry. But I refused.”
Matrimar is less than 20 minutes from Mojarras, where the company wanted to install a second stone quarry next to the village’s stream. Blanca explains that two other streams, Sardinas and Pescado, have already dried up, seriously impacting the community which already lacks drinking water and relies on wells.
"The creek used to flow all year round. Its name comes from the fact that it even had little fish, little mojarritas," says Blanca. "And why are there no more mojarras? Because there’s not enough water, it doesn't flow anymore.”
A 2017 state-wide Environmental Standard forbids resource extraction within 20 meters of areas with a high capacity for subterranean aquifer recharge—like the Agualeguas-Ramones basin.
“And Matrimar is right on top of it,” Benavides said, pointing to a hydrological map spread out on the floor of his porch.
Blanca, who owns a small grocery a stone’s throw away from the new military base, says she sees semi-trucks passing by every hour, some bound for Monterrey, others for Rio Grande, Texas.
“They’ve already drilled several wells inside [the military base], and they have no water,” says Blanca. "It doesn't flow like it used to."
According to Martínez, Nuevo León’s Secretary of the Environment, the Picachos Mountains management plan defines land uses compatible with conservation objectives. He said it seeks to ensure land use generates income for the surrounding communities.
But locals say few actually benefit from the quarry’s activities: only a handful of workers live in Cerralvo. The mayor of Cerralvo, Baltazar Martínez, has family ties with Martínez Gutiérrez, Matrimar's owner.
Residents of Benavides Grande and Benavides Olivares have filed lawsuits with the Secretary of Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development and with the Federal Agrarian Tribunal, claiming Matrimar occupies some of their lands, and alleging it does so without having consulted the ejido’s communal assembly.
“The quarry land was never ceded,” said Benavides. “They grabbed it, they settled it, without permission from anyone, nor the community.”
Despite the impacts, political support for the company—especially at the local level—and the presence of organized crime in the area mean many prefer to remain silent or anonymous. Nuevo León has long been known for a kind of rugged individualism that centers on economic progress and an entrepreneurial tradition.
Traveling around Higueras, Cerralvo, and Los Herrera, I learned firsthand that locals prefer not to discuss the issue. They referred me to Benavides. His high profile, he says, protects him.
Soldiers in sneakers and ghost towns
From the outside, San Vicente looks like a ghost town. The Benavides ranch sits on the edge of town, on a road controlled by organized crime. During the day, there is almost no movement, unless there’s a shootout. At night, says Benavides, the hum of trucks is constant.
“If you take these dirt roads, you’ll be in Roma, Texas, in 40 minutes,” said Benavides.
Researchers have flagged how violence linked to organized crime in northeastern Mexico—sometimes supported by private companies—has forced people to abandon their homes, leaving the land open for natural resource exploitation.
Oscar Rodríguez, a researcher at the College of the Northern Border, told Ojalá there is an important correlation between areas with natural resources and violent hotspots—although organized crime remains primarily focused on narcotics, weapons, and human trafficking routes to the US.
“The drug routes and other activities towards the United States could be considered the initial draw,” said Rodríguez in a telephone interview. “We’ve also seen other motives, particularly the resources that these areas may have, which are also very important for criminal groups.”
Next to San Vicente is the community of Martinitos, which also appears empty. There are just a few pick-up trucks that drive by, as well as by “soldiers in sneakers,” a nickname locals use for people hired to keep watch on the roads.
Many residents have stopped returning home; houses built with remittance money sit half-built, gray and bare. Locals brave enough to talk told me how, in recent years, there have been hundreds of cases of disappearance in the area that people do not dare to report.
On February 19, Mexican Army Day, I drove down Highway 54. It was cold, and the sky was cloudy, without the usual dust. Something felt different. Municipal and state police patrols, as well as the National Guard, were stationed at each kilometer between Monterrey and Cerralvo. A helicopter flew overhead.
It turned out that President Claudia Sheinbaum was in Cerralvo to inaugurate the new military base.
Later that afternoon, the road was back to its usual state. The official show had ended, and another set of trucks began their patrols.
This is the third in a series of articles made possible by support from the Resilience Fund.
