Being one of the known places of Nuevo Laredo, I decided to go and see what it was all about. In its glory days, La Zona was a place of bars, brothels, casinos, restaurants, hotels, and just about anything else you could want for a care-free night out. It is most literally a walled town within a town, complete with infrastructure for its residents and visitors.
Only ten years ago, rides were readily available to take willing tourists directly from the border to La Zona. To the right, there was a fully functioning police station and clinic.
Here is an old map of what used to be in La Zona:. While many of the places listed are no longer in use, the above map does show the overall layout of La Zona. After checking out the former police station at the entrance, I proceeded down the road in front of me. I was attracted to the other side of the Zona by what looked like a shrine on the outside wall facing the entrance. Here is a view of the entrance from it:. This part of La Zona is where some of the only remaining bars and strip clubs are.
If one proceeds to the left at the black building, there is a road with ruins of clubs, hotels, and brothels. There were also a few rather unsavory characters loitering down there, which is the main reason I took no pictures. La Santa Muerte is a religious figure venerated by people across Mexico. Devotion to this figure is condemned by the Catholic Church, yet many either incorporate her into their faith against the ecclesiastical magesterium or proceed to worship her completely divorced from Catholic teachings and practices.
While regular people will visit her altars and petition her in prayer, she infamously has a reputation as the patroness of the cartels, prisoners, prostitutes, and other underworld figures. Next to this shrine was the transvestite strip club and bar. Walking onward from the Santa Muerte shrine along the perimeter road, I walked by some of the open prostitution cribs where independent working ladies live and work.
