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.

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.

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.

In their portable radio conversations while driving, the family heard them speaking about avoiding Los Zetas, the rival crime syndicate of the Gulf Cartel.

The Cázares recall younger members of the kidnapping ring were the kindest, gave the adults bread and milk, and the children juice to drink.

According to the agency's investigator, Manuel Adolfo Benavides Parra, the Cázares identified the two men as part of the Gulf Cartel kidnapping ring.

[11] 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.

[1] 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.

Copies of the document were also sent to other high-ranking government officials including: Marisela Morales, the attorney general of Mexico; Eugenio Javier Hernández Flores, the former governor of Tamaulipas; Egidio Torre Cantú, governor of Tamaulipas; Rick Perry, governor of Texas; Alejandro Poiré Romero, former secretary of Interior; Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, former secretary of Foreign Affairs; Rodolfo Quilantán Arenas, Mexican consul in Brownsville, Texas; Carlos de Icaza González [es], Mexico's ambassador to France; Francisco González Díaz, Mexico's ambassador to Germany; Gérald Martin, the general consul of France in Mexico; Guillermo Galván Galván, the secretary of National Defense; General Erwin Rodolfo Solórzano Barragán of the Mexican Army; Jaime Domingo López Buitrón, director of the Center for Research and National Security; Rafael Lomelí Martínez, former secretary of Public Security in Tamaulipas; Bolívar Hernández Garza, former Tamaulipas attorney general; Raúl Plascencia Villanueva [es], director of Mexico's National Human Rights Commission; Luis González Plascencia, head of Mexico City's Human Rights Commission; Antonio Aranibar Quiroga, Mexico's ambassador to the Organization of American States; and Edgardo Buscaglia, a professor at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México and organized crime expert.

[11] Ludivine Barbier, a French-native and wife of Rodolfo Cázares, gathered 72,041 signatures through Change.org in late 2012, and asked Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to help bring her husband back.

The petition was also directed to politicians Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, Luis Videgaray Caso, and Erwin Manuel Lino Zárate.

She stated that Peña Nieto had to improve his image abroad and argued that if her petition managed to gather signatures from all over the world, he would have no other option but to work on the case.

[19] Barbier also joined in solidarity with Frédérique Santal, the sister of Olivier Tschumi, a Swiss native who was kidnapped in Cuernavaca, Morelos in 2010 and remains disappeared.

[21][22] Barbier also gave the petition letter for Peña Nieto to Juan Andrés Ordóñez Gómez, who managed the administrative duties of the Embassy of Mexico in France and substitutes for Carlos de Icaza González.

Barbier also reached out to Europe and wrote letters to the governments of France and Germany (the former because Rodolfo Cázares was a French citizen and the latter because he was a symphony conductor with legal residence there).

[25] France's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development responded by saying they were working on the case with Mexico and that Rodolfo Cázares could count on all the consular support he needed due to his French citizenship.

[26] She also managed to convince France's President François Hollande to talk about the case with Peña Nieto during his visit to the Élysée Palace on 17 October.

[27] On 5 December, Barbier contacted Gérald Martin and sent a letter to Los Pinos presidential residence asking for an interview with Peña Nieto.

[16] On 11 December, the French government stated that Rodolfo Cázares was not considered a political hostage and thereby was not included in the list of Frenchmen kidnapped abroad.

They were concerned primarily with solving the case surrounding Florence Cassez, a French native who was arrested in Mexico and given a 60-year sentence for reportedly participating in a kidnapping.

[30][31] The arts community where Barbier's husband Rodolfo Cázares worked in Bremerhaven attempted to create a fundraiser for the family to help pay his ransom to the kidnappers.

[11] The Cázares also contacted the German Foreign Affairs Minister and with Bernd Neumann, who was the representative of the Federal Government for Culture; with the Embassy of Mexico in Berlin and with more municipal authorities in Bremerhaven.

[33] The Media and Public Relations Department of the Embassy of Germany in Mexico City stated that they were saddened by the kidnapping, but the case was out of their jurisdiction because Rodolfo was not a German citizen.

[5][34] Barbier also sent letters to Catholic cardinals in the archdioceses of New York, Berlin, Paris, and Munich and Freising, asking them to pray for her family members that were missing.

One version is the family was kidnapped because one of the Cázares' grandfathers had a mistress whose sons were involved with Los Zetas, a rival criminal group of the Gulf Cartel.

Federal sources allege that Rafael Cárdenas Vela (alias "El Junior"), a former high-ranking leader of the Gulf Cartel and regional boss of Matamoros, ordered the abduction of the Cázares family as a reprisal for the attacks.

[39] According to federal investigator Rosario G. Sandoval Medina, former high-ranking Gulf Cartel boss Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez confirmed that Cárdenas Vela had ordered the mass kidnapping.

[41] The SEIDO federal agency, under the directorship of José Cuitláhuac Salinas Martínez, promised to obtain an agreement with U.S. law enforcement to question him about the case.

[16][29] In February 2013, one of the Cázares family members confirmed to the press that legal procedure to interrogate Cárdenas Vela had not born fruit.

[42][43] Another monetary reward of the same amount was offered to anyone who can provide information that leads to the identity, location, and/or arrest of the people who planned and/or executed the kidnapping.