Tavira and his wife were getting ready for bed when they heard the loud banging. It was the middle of the night, and as the noise grew louder and faster, Tavira realized that men were downstairs breaking through the security gate outside his home in Piedras Negras, the Mexican border city across from Eagle Pass.
Tavira’s children woke and came out of their rooms just as men, wearing bulletproof vests and armed with automatic rifles, stormed the house. Tavira would later recall how one of the gunmen covered his face with a mask made to look like a skull — “like you were looking at death.”
As a drug trafficker for the powerful Zetas cartel, Tavira recognized some of his captors. One was a friend of the family, someone whose kids played with Tavira’s own. The man ordered Tavira’s wife and children into the closet, shut the door, and then directed him down the hallway toward the staircase.