On 9 July 2011, affiliates of the Gulf Cartel kidnapped 18 members of the Cázares family from three different households in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The women and children were released three days later, but the abductors kept five men. Forty-eight hours later, the Gulf Cartel contacted the family members who had been released to negotiate a ransom. After several days of negotiation and several ransom payments totaling US$100,000, the Cázares were called to deliver their final payment on 27 July. They sent the money to the kidnappers and waited at a specified location for a white van the kidnappers promised would deliver their remaining family members. However, the van never arrived and the phone the kidnappers used to contact the Cázares went out of service. The family then decided to contact the authorities for a criminal investigation.

The mass kidnapping of the Cázares family stands out from other abduction cases in Mexico because all eighteen victims were related. Among them were three U.S. citizens. The family has sent letters to officials at all levels of the Mexican government and has reached out to international heads of state for assistance with the case. The kidnapping remains unsolved; the whereabouts of the five remaining abductees, and the motive behind their kidnapping, are officially unknown. Mexican government sources, however, agree that the kidnapping was masterminded by the top echelons of the Gulf Cartel.

Kidnapping At around 5:00 a.m. on 9 July 2011, at least eight gunmen aligned with the Gulf Cartel entered the first Cázares' family home in the San Francisco neighborhood of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, to carry out a kidnapping. This house was owned by Rodolfo Cázares Garza. The kidnappers were wearing military-style uniforms and ski masks. However, the victims noticed they were sporting white-colored sneakers, speaking vulgarities, and looking for valuable possessions in the house, which suggested they were not law enforcement or military personnel. They stormed the home's bedrooms to round up the victims before blindfolding them (except for two children). Once the kidnappers ordered the patriarch to open the family's safe, they forced the family into their vehicles before taking off. By 7:00 am, the Gulf Cartel kidnappers reached the second Cázares' home in the Río neighborhood and forced the family to open their front door. "We have your brother", one of the kidnappers said as the others guarded the entrance booth to the neighborhood with assault rifles. Four more relatives were kidnapped at the second home, owned by Rodolfo's brother Héctor Cázares Garza. However, one family member managed to escape through the back door of the house before running to a third Cázares' home a few blocks away. A few minutes later, the kidnappers made their way into the third house, owned by Alberto Cázares Garza, one of the brothers. By 8:00 am, 18 members of the Cázares family had been kidnapped. This mass abduction stood out from other kidnapping cases in Mexico because all the victims were related.

Six of the Cázares men, Rodolfo Cázares Garza, Manuel Alberto Cázares Garza, Héctor Cázares Garza, Rodolfo Ignacio Cázares Solís, Rubén Luna Mendoza, and Rodolfo Garza Solís, were kept together. The women and children, along with one of the grandfathers, were kept in a separate vehicle throughout most of the first day. After leaving the house, the captors drove them around the city for several hours and switched them into different vehicles on busy streets in broad daylight. The kidnappers stole several of the vehicles from the families' homes. According to one family member, the kidnappers even stopped for gas and did not pay for the service. In their portable radio conversations while driving, the family heard them speaking about avoiding Los Zetas, the rival crime syndicate of the Gulf Cartel. That evening, the women were taken to a hostage safe house where at least 20 other men were drinking and smoking cannabis. The windows in this undisclosed location were covered. A shootout broke out near the premises. The abductees were blindfolded, seated next to a corpse, and transported to a different location in another SUV. The Cázares had the impression the kidnappers were looking for a place to hide them. The family believes the kidnappers moved them around Matamoros for hours because they did not expect to find the number of people they had in the houses where they carried out the abductions.

Despite the turmoil, the kidnappers tried to keep the victims calm. They told the family they had inadvertently mistaken their identities and that they were going to be released. "We're from the Gulf Cartel", one of them told them. "We're the good guys". The women said that although they were scared of a few of their captors, for the most part, the kidnappers treated them well. The Cázares recall younger members of the kidnapping ring were the kindest, gave the adults bread and milk, and the children juice to drink. Some of them allowed the victims to remove their blindfolds while the gang's boss was gone. The women and children were kept in a safe house with gunmen for another three days. On 11 July, the kidnappers released the women and children around midnight at a Walmart parking lot. Five Cázares men, however, remained in captivity. Rodolfo Garza Solís, 82, was released by his captors 16 days after the kidnapping.

Ransoming On 13 July, the kidnappers contacted Sergio Cázares Garza, one of the family members who lived in Texas and told him that his kidnapped relatives would be released if the family paid a ransom. Initially, the family said they could pay only a few thousand dollars, but the captors allowed them at least two days to collect more money. In total, the Cázares made four different payments to the kidnappers in Matamoros totalling US$100,000. The first payment was delivered to a grocery store parking lot; the second was left behind a fast-food eatery. The kidnappers communicated with the Cázares family hiding in Texas by telephone. A trusted family employee in Matamoros made the cash deliveries. Each time a delivery was made, the Gulf Cartel sent a different envoy to pick up the money.

During the ransoming process, the Cázares were allowed to talk with the hostages on three occasions. In their first phone conversation, the victims talked about their concern for their wives and children. Their second conversation, however, was a lot shorter and emotional for the Cázares. By 27 July, the kidnappers said they needed a final cash delivery to release their captives. The Cázares sent the money to Matamoros from Texas and eagerly awaited at a prearranged location for a white van that was supposed to deliver their relatives. The van never came and the phone line the family used to contact the kidnappers was out of service. Weeks after that, the family decided to contact law enforcement.

Initial proceedings Once the Cázares decided to ask for help from law enforcement, the local police stated that they were going to investigate the case. However, about a month later, they wrote to the Cázares saying the case was outside their jurisdiction. The family tried to contact the police by e-mail and telephone, and even attempted to contact the mayor of Matamoros, Alfonso Sánchez Garza, but their messages were not answered. On 13 September 2011, the Cázares issued a formal complaint at the Public Ministry of Matamoros (Spanish: Ministerio Público de Matamoros) and the case was opened by state authorities in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas. A family member who was a U.S. citizen also contacted the FBI and asked them for help with the case. It was brought to the attention of Texas Governor Rick Perry, who promised to support the investigation. A few weeks after that, one of the alleged kidnappers was arrested in Texas following a traffic violation. That same month, a Tamaulipas' anti-kidnapping squad began to work on the case and collected testimony from the Cázares who had been kidnapped and released.

In October 2011, Mexican Navy soldiers visited the three houses where the Cázares were abducted to investigate the crime scenes. In November 2011, Mexican security forces arrested two suspects on federal charges for drug and weapons offenses. According to the agency's investigator, Manuel Adolfo Benavides Parra, the Cázares identified the two men as part of the Gulf Cartel kidnapping ring. However, since the two suspects were arrested under federal charges, his agency was prevented from interrogating them. At the same time, a Tamaulipas law enforcement official stated that the case was under state jurisdiction and refused to comment on the two detainees arrested for federal offenses. U.S. authorities also did not provide details on the other alleged suspect arrested in Texas. In November 2011, a friend of the Cázares managed to put them in contact with Deputy Interior Secretary Felipe Zamora Castro, a high-ranking official within the Mexican government, who said he was willing to help with the kidnapping investigation. A couple of days after being in contact with the family, however, Zamora died in a helicopter accident along with Secretary of the Interior Francisco Blake Mora. In December 2011, the Cázares case was received by Gualberto Ramírez, coordinator of the Anti-Kidnapping Unit of the now-defunct Subprocuraduría de Investigación Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada (SIEDO), Mexico's organized crime investigatory agency.

By 2012, the Cázares claimed the Tamaulipas' agency had not questioned potential suspects or eyewitnesses to the kidnapping, nor had they visited the locations relevant to the case. The Cázares have insisted that authorities should start by investigating the house where they were taken following their kidnapping, given that it is located just a block away from a busy street in Matamoros. In March 2012, an electricity bill was found on the door of the premises. The bill showed that there was significant electricity use during the month the family was kidnapped, and the last time someone paid the bill was in January 2011. A neighbor who lived near the house where the Cázares were held hostage said he did not know who the owners of the property were but acknowledged seeing suspicious activity during the evenings. On 7 March, about 10 months after the kidnappings, Gérald Martin, the general consul of France in Mexico, told the Cázares family that a squadron of Mexico's Federal Police had been dispatched to Matamoros to work on the case directly. The family claims, however, they are not sure if the investigation was carried out. They said they did not receive any documents concerning the investigation. By October 2012, a criminal court in Jalisco, under Judge Francisco Martín Hernández Zaragoza, was assigned to investigate the case. The family claims they do not know the details of his investigation.

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