The Tamaulipas Border in 2025

By Itzli

Taking a look at the current state of affairs along the Tamaulipas border with the United States.

Heads up, this article is old school Nabble forum Itzli style so expect informal first person tone without taking the time to reference everything I say. Don’t like that? Click elsewhere and I’ll refund you the $0 you paid to read this, I’ll even through in the whole $0 I earn spending my time to write this all down. Luckily there’s still cool people here that’ll make it worth my time.

Anyways, it seems like what I can show with my writing and research over the past few months is about as good as George R. R. Martin and The Winds of Winter so rather than trying to get to this point with what I have in the works let’s just dive right into what’s going on in the world of CDG along the Tamaulipas border with Texas/United States. This is important because the Trump administration has started declaring cartels terrorist organizations. By the way, no politics in the comments, I don’t care if your MAGA, woke, or anything in between, go somewhere else besides the comment section if you want to talk about who in the United States government is the good guys and who’s the bad guys, we’d probably get more productive discussion about Kendrick Lamar versus Drake so no politics from me and no politics from you.

Back to the point, been seeing the above map on Twitter and then @LosBloqueados2 had a really good post which motivated me to write. We see this plane circling across from Nuevo Laredo, CDN territory. This cartel is interesting, of course there’s still the rumors that 40 runs it from prison but for the longest Huevo Treviño was in charge. He gets arrested and his cousin Juanito Treviño aka La Sombra is said to be running things. I got bogged down in a Los Treviño/CDN leadership history article that I’ll finish one day but for now the point I want to make is that things may not be all good in the CDN. Maybe it’s just me, but ever since 42 got arrested it seems like there’s a power play going on between Anabel Treviño and her kids on one end and Francisco Treviño and sons on the other which involves Huevo, Juanito, La Bola, etc.

The plane does another loop along a stretch that includes Ciudad Mier, Los Guerra, Miguel Aleman and Camargo which continues to be an interesting area. As @LosBloqueados2 point out, Ciudad Mier continues to be controlled by the CDN, specifically El Chamuko and El H. Apparently “El Chamuko” is a regional leader, there’s some stuff being said about him on Twitter lately. Los Guerra still seems to be the dividing line of control with Los Metros under Primito controlling to the east of there. For Los Metros you have La Galleta in Miguel Aleman, El Pirata in Diaz Ordaz,  and El Gafe in Camargo, not quite sure if he means that El Rockero is his other alias or if it’s a different dude. El Gafe has nothing to do with the famous old CDG leader that used that alias, nor does he seem to be military or anything, he’s just some young guy that’s come to power.

So CDN for the longest has been attacking from the west trying to get Miguel Aleman, like I said, Los Guerra seems to be the dividing line so you get a lot of fighting back and forth over that town. Seems that CDN figured that out and had been conducting what I called the campaign for Camargo, just forget about Miguel Aleman and hitting from the southwest rural area to attack Camargo which makes the town of Comales suddenly strategic. El Barbas is running things there. Tied into this is the whole northeast Nuevo Leon area including Doctor Coss where a lot of the recent fighting has been taking place. This is territory controlled by El Chapparro, one of the few old school Metros that worked with M3 still around. So anytime you hear about fighting in Doctor Coss, General Bravo or areas nearby it’s fighting between CDN and him.

Another loop of the airplane covers Reynosa and Rio Bravo. Reynosa has always been the crown jewel of Los Metros and continues to be controlled by El Mono M36 who used to be the bodyguard of Panochitas. Not everyone thinks this but I feel like there is still somewhat a division within Los Metros, not necessarily rivals but just the way things cluster that goes back to when the Ribereña Metros fought the Reynosa Metros so you have Primito’s crew in Miguel Aleman, Camargo, and Diaz Ordaz while Mono and Chaparro are in with more old school guys. We’ll get back to Reynosa in a bit.

The final loop is across from Matamoros, home of the Matamoros faction of the CDG. El Contador is back directly in charge, having ran things from prison for a while. Yeah he has an ankle monitor and/or has to check in with prison once a week but no one really thinks that’s stopping him from doing anything. Uncle Osiel was out but got sent to Mexico and is in prison, things are quiet on that front and it doesn’t seem like he’s really doing anything. 

It’s funny though, people were complaining some much about Ciego doing all sorts of dirt while Contador was in prison and then Contador kills him and now it’s all Contador kills his own people and can’t be trusted. From my perspective here’s the elephant in the room, all cartels are evil but bias isn’t universal, there’s a lot of framing Contador in the worst possible light. I touched on this before but it really seems that there are some accounts that are aligned with M1 Cardenas and his son Beto that focus on burning Contador. Plus Los Metros have always been big on social media and I get where some people say some of the major accounts are aligned with them, maybe not directly but there’s bias no doubt. Again, I’m not being a Contador apologist, just saying you have to take a step back on some information.

@LosBloqueados2 didn’t mention this but El Casco aka El Joker is in control of Rio Bravo, no more Miguelito it seems as he was arrested, of course you never know when someone gets quietly released. Here’s where we get back to cartel bias. I really don’t care who’s winning or losing but what people say at times matters less than what the evidence points to. I’m talking about SDR reports, that’s a good way of telling where fighting is taking place. 

When the truce between Metros and CDG Matamoros fell apart when the war between San Fernando (Sierras and ZVE) and Matamoros broke out last year things got really hot in Rio Bravo. Things have died down in Rio Bravo proper it seems and from the SDR reports it seems to me that Los Metros can’t get past Palo Blanco anymore. It also seems that Matamoros is heating up the east side of Reynosa, especially the Pharr bridge area. I see stuff about them using Ubers and public vehicles to sneak people in plus the GE being on their payroll. Similar strategy they’ve pulled before trying to heat up the plaza. Sorry it may sound like I’m being a Matamoros cheerleader but just calling it how I see it, the SDR reports point to things being hot in Reynosa, even hear about mutilated bodies but pictures never seem to come out. No one wants to be the next Minu3t.

Ultimately I think this all ties into the whole rumors of a new truce taking place which hit hard for a day and then seems to have gone by the wayside. Declaring cartels terrorist organizations and the whole threat of drone strikes destabilize the whole situation plus wars are always bad for cartel business. It makes sense to want to come up with a ceasefire and the governor would definitely be pushing for that to happen. The impression I get though is that Los Metros don’t trust Contador and I’m sure Matamoros will want concessions. Control of Rio Bravo has been mentioned as part of a potential agreement but like I said, it seems that’s already happened. My guess is that Matamoros won’t sign off unless they get access to Pharr, just not sure if they would insist on complete control or if they would settle for open access.