Monterrey Rebounds from Drug-Cartel Barbarism to Thriving Foreign Investment Hub Nacha Cattan - Bloomberg
go to original May 11, 2015

A boy looks at one of the sculptures of an exhibition called “Guns for Peace” at Bishopric Hill in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico. “Guns for Peace” is part of a project of sculptures called “No Violence,” by artists around the world. (Julio César Aguilar/AFP)

The attack that burned 52 people to death at a casino in an upscale neighborhood was bad. But what really scared Idalia Villafana’s customers away were the body parts once strewn across the plaza near her restaurant.

Villafana, 41, says she still can’t believe that the barbarism wrought by the Zetas drug cartel has largely subsided here near Monterrey, Mexico’s third-biggest metropolis, just a few years after she’d almost given up hope for peace.

For that, she can thank local business leaders who got fed up with the penetration of the legal system by criminal syndicates and helped create and fund a unique program to take back the streets. The result: Murders in this industrial hub on the steps of the Sierra Madre are at a five-year low and commerce is once again thriving.

A bustling symbol of the turnaround is the factory South Korea’s Kia Motors is building for more than $1 billion not far from where the Zetas once operated a paramilitary base. That’s helped push the wider Nuevo León region, which touches Texas, past Mexico City as the national leader in pledged foreign direct investment, with another $6 billion expected this year, state officials say.

Read the rest at Tico Times

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