EFE Seven municipal police officers were arrested in connection with the kidnapping, torture and murder of a marine in the eastern state of Veracruz, the Mexican Navy Secretariat said.
Three marines were abducted, tortured and murdered recently, with two of the killings occurring in Veracruz and one in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, the secretariat said last week.
The three unidentified marines were involved in operations targeting drug traffickers and other criminal organizations.
The police officers were arrested in connection with the killing of a marine whose body was found on June 11 near the Tuxpan River in Veracruz, the secretariat said.
The navy has participated actively in the war on drugs, with marines involved in the December 2009 killing of drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva.
Gunmen later murdered several relatives of marine Melquisedet Angulo Cordova, who died in the shootout in which Beltran Leyva was killed on Dec. 16, 2009, in Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos state.
The gunmen, all suspected of being members of the Los Zetas drug cartel, killed Angulo Cordova’s mother, two brothers and aunt.
The marine’s relatives were murdered on Dec. 21, 2009, at the family’s home in Paraiso, Tabasco, just hours after their loved one was laid to rest with full military honors.
Calderon has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers and Federal Police officers across the country to combat drug cartels and other criminal organizations.
The anti-drug operation, however, has failed to put a dent in the violence due, according to experts, to drug cartels’ ability to buy off the police and even high-ranking officials.
Mexico's drug gangs have exploded into a frenzy of violence in recent years. Less visible, but just as significant, is their increased power in the international drug market, and connections to foreign criminal organizations. As Contralinea reports, while Mexican groups like the Sinaloa Cartel have long had close links with Colombian cocaine suppliers and U.S. drug wholesalers, they are now establishing their presence across the world. In the process, they are carving out links with some of the most established groups in Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Indian subcontinent.
While reports of Mexican groups being mixed up in drug rings in places as far afield as Malaysia and West Africa is nothing new, recent evidence points to a more substantial, enduring presence in strategically important foreign nations. Not only are they buying and selling large shipments of cocaine, they are setting up shop in local retail markets and carving out toeholds in newly important regions like West Africa and India.
The “Mexicanization” of the international drug trade has an impact on Mexico. For the governmental agencies charged with combating these gangs it is bad news. Increased profits and new sanctuaries abroad can reduce the gangs’ vulnerability to local prosecutions, while also increasing their financial capacity to corrupt. Indeed, one source contacted by Contralinea speculated that the expansion of Mexican drug gangs is being orchestrated by legitimate government office-holders, though he offered zero evidence to support such a charge.
The following is InSight's translation of extracts from the report.
Their bilateral investigations [by Italian and American authorities] have revealed that the Gulf Cartel maintains links with the ‘Ndrangheta, the criminal organization that controls the region of Calabria and, in the international scene, traffics drugs to New York and Europe.
The binational operation Reckoning was the first antecedent for American and Italian authorities regarding the drug-trafficking links between [Italy] and Mexico. The operation showed that the Mexican traffickers exported cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana in large quantities to Italy.
[…]
With information from Japanese authorities, the report [from the State Department] indicates that "methamphetamine is illegally smuggled in principally from Iran, Mexico, and Africa. The exporters of marijuana are Canada and the United States, while the domestic cultivation of marijuana is rising, though it is of small scale."
The report adds that more than 80 percent of the arrests for drug trafficking are related to methamphetamine, a market that continues to be the greatest threat for the anti-drug efforts of the Japanese government.
Researcher Daniel Marquez points out that international drug trafficking “is a business of $400 billion annually.” With the phenomenon of the globalization of crime, he offers two hypotheses linked to the role of the intelligence agencies in the traffic of drugs and the role that illicit substances play in corrupting officials:
“If all that money is moved, someone necessarily must control it and maybe they aren't the big cartels or those big criminal groups -- the Zetas, the Beltran Leyvas, the Familia Michoacana, the Valencia Valencias, the Gulf -- but maybe there is a higher level of decision making.”
[…]
American authorities point to Peru as the second largest producer of cocaine in the world and a big importer of precursor chemicals used for the production of that drug. It is estimated that, across the country, some 40,000 hectares are dedicated to the cultivation of coca.
At the same time, they identify Mexican traffickers as some of their principal clients. According to American investigations, the links detected thus far involve the Peruvian mafia and the Sinaloa Cartel and the Zetas.
Furthermore, the Council of the European Union says that the erstwhile hegemony of the Colombian cartels in the drug business in Colombia is presently shared with the Tijuana, Sinaloa, Juarez, and Guadalajara Cartels.
[...]
Along with the Russian mafia and the Chinese triads, the Mexicans are one of the three principal mafias of transnational organized crime, PRI Deputy Maria de Jesus Aguirre Maldonado said on March 6, while presenting a bill to consider organized crime a threat to national security.
According to Europol, the presence of Mexican cartels in European markets is growing. “The growth of the cocaine traffic from Mexico to Spain and Portugal is striking. This could indicate a new trend in the importance that the European Union, along with the predominance of the Mexican cartels in the illegal drug markets in the United States and the levels of violence linked to their activities.
[...]
In the assessment mid-term review and regional indicative programme 2011-2013 for Latin America, the European Union warns that the Mexican cartels have begun to replace the Colombians in drug trafficking, principally in the world cocaine market, "seemingly as a result of successful actions against the Colombian mafia."
According to Annex 6 of the report, "Central America and the Caribbean are two of the principal regions for cocaine transit. In 2008 alone they represented 15 percent of all world seizures."
It adds that in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, cocaine production has increased. "This reflects the growing importance of these countries in traffic of that drug, to satisfy internal demand and to export drugs to Europe (principally through West Africa), Africa, and the Pacific region."
AP A journalist, his wife, and their 21-year-old son were shot to death inside their home in this Gulf coast city Monday, authorities said.
Journalist Miguel Angel Lopez Velasco and his family were shot with a 9 mm handgun, said Veracruz state prosecutor Jorge Yunis.
Lopez Velasco wrote a column about politics and crime and was editorial director for the daily newspaper Notiver. His son had been working as a photographer for the same newspaper.
Yunis said investigators haven’t determined a motive in the killings and no one has been arrested.
Earlier this month, state police in Veracruz found the body of reporter Noel Lopez in a clandestine grave. He had been missing since March. The two reporters are not related.
Police said Noel Lopez died of a blow to the head and that soldiers found his body after a man they arrested in the killings of several police officers confessed to killing him and led them to the body.
Noel Lopez worked for the weeklies Horizonte and Noticias de Acayucan and for the daily newspaper La Verdad.
Press freedom groups say Mexico is the most dangerous country in the Americas for journalists. More than 60 reporters have been killed in Mexico since 2000, according to the National Human Rights Commission.
Responsible for the slaughter of some 70 migrants, mostly from Central America, which appeared in a mass grave in the town of San Fernando, Tamaulipas was a 22 year old who was just arrested. This young man ordered the kidnapping of several buses carrying the migrants, detained and tortured them to find out if they had a relationship with a rival group and finally ordered they be killed.
Also arrested was one of the murderers of two of Governor Rodrigo Medina’s bodyguards, who is 18 years of age. SWAT team members of Nuevo Leon were picked up by police in the municipality of Zuazua, and given to assassins who tortured and killed them leaving a message to the governor. Also last week, there was a very rough gunbattle on the border between Jalisco and Zacatecas. Gunmen who moved in several trucks with federal forces clashed for hours, ten died and several were arrested, including six girls between the ages of 16 and 21 who admitted being killers and sexual partners of members of the criminal group. They collected 12,000 pesos ($1,000) every two weeks.
Such was the case last week. Before this there have been stories of “El Ponchis” and child assassins of Morelos, or the young girls, almost children, with whom Jesús “El Negro” Radilla, head of the same group which “El Ponchis” was affiliated with, who served as sexual partners, assassins or were hired to leave mutilated bodies in the streets; or the thousands of young gang members in Los Aztecas or Artistas Asesinos, engaged in brutal warfare across the border area of Ciudad Juárez.
The stories are innumerable, but the truth is that every time, the assassins of these criminal groups are younger and crueler with their victims, and more money has less to do with their involvement in these criminal groups. Nothing is more worrisome in terms of social phenomenon which has been done directly, than involving thousands of children and adolescents in organized crime, not as in the past being camels (carriers) or consumers and distributors, but increasingly as killers for trace amounts of money. Girls held in Jalisco are paid 1,500 pesos every two weeks, cartel members for the Pacifico Sur just over 3,000 pesos, which is the same as members of the Aztecas or Artistas Asesinos.
Money is no longer the engine of this embodiment. It is a mixture of lust for power, social standing, and ends up being, although it sounds terrible, it demonstrates the magnitude of the social challenge we are facing, when the aspiration for some young people is to be an assassin, to take part in the most cruel and most violent acts within organized crime. Of course all this has to do with the inadequacies that exist in offering work and study to millions of young people in the country, but also a deterioration of the family environment in which these youth are raised, which leaves them with what appears to be, no alternative. If the lack of study or work is the determining factor, the use of drugs and alcohol, which is starting between the ages of 10 and 11, is the trigger for this phenomenon.
It has been said, including those who proposed to be involved in the march that was led by Javier Sicilia, but also by high level political figures, we must have a return to codes - a kind of pact with criminal groups to prevent the current levels of violence. They have forgotten something important: these codes, among criminal gangs, they were lost long ago. If at some time it did not involve women or youth at such an early age in this business, let alone the work of hired killers, it is today the norm, especially when casualties are so accelerated that they cannot or do not want to form new elements . Everyone is disposable.
Today, you can go from stealing car mirrors to becoming an abductor or killer, in a matter of a few weeks or sometimes days in the delinquent pyramid. Views that advocate a covenant or a code with these groups, forget that the moment has passed and that violence has become a code that transcends even criminal groups and their bosses. It has its own dynamics.
The strategy for security may be subject, of course, to adjustments and changes. But it requires an additional national effort, different, having true vision, to serve a generation that is truly in danger and that perhaps a percentage, unfortunately high, we have already lost. But also to take steps towards the next generation, kids who are now completing primary school and are on the threshold of that hell, to not end up falling into it. The secret is obvious: education and work.
Article: As translated from http://www.excelsior.com.mx/index.php?m=nota&id_nota=711122
Former CIA Asset Claims U.S. Special Forces Assisted Mexican Soldiers In Assault on Stash Site
The recent raid of a stash site on the Mexican side of the border suspected of containing a cache of guns and/or drugs is drawing attention once again to the U.S. border town of Columbus, N.M. — where 11 people, including the mayor, police chief and a village trustee, were recently indicted on gun-running charges.
The Mexican stash site was raided this past Wednesday evening, June 15, according to former CIA contract pilot and New Mexico resident Tosh Plumlee, who was present at the scene taking photos.
The stash site — actually two warehouse buildings on a ranch just south of the border and some 20 to 30 miles east of Palomas, Mexico, which borders Columbus — was allegedly raided by the Mexican military in cooperation with a U.S. military special-operations task force, Plumlee asserts. That Pentagon task force has been active inside Mexico and along the border region for several years and provided intelligence and other unspecified support for the recent raid, according to Plumlee.
In addition, U.S. Border Patrol agents assisted the operation by providing back-up support along the U.S. side of the border, along with Mexican soldiers on their side of the border, to close down possible escape routes for suspects fleeing the raid site.
As evidence of the operation, Plumlee provided to Narco News date-stamped photos of Mexican soldiers and Border Patrol agents conversing with each other at the border fence shortly after the raid of the ranch location was launched less than a mile behind them inside Mexico. He also provided a photo of a Mexican helicopter that assisted with the raid.
The fact that the suspected stash site in Mexico is located some 20 to 30 miles from Columbus, N.M., raises the possibility that it was being used by criminals active in Columbus as a transshipment location for guns and drugs — with the former flowing south and the latter moving north. Plumlee says the Mexican soldiers he spoke with at the fence line on June 15 would not confirm what was found at the raid site, other than indicating [translated from Spanish] that it was “a good day for us and a bad day for them.”
However, Ramiro Cordero, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman stationed at the Customs and Border Protection Field Office in El Paso, Texas, which oversees the Columbus area, told Narco News that he “has no official report” of Border Patrol cooperating with the Mexican military in a raid operation.
Cordero volunteered that he was sent photographs from “the media” of “Border Patrol agents meeting with the Mexican military at the [border] fence,” but contends that is not evidence that they were engaged in an operation. But Cordero also did not rule out that there was some type of raid carried out on the Mexican side of the border, conceding that he has “no information indicating that there was not an operation.”
Plumlee insists he did not send the photos to any other media besides Narco News. He points out that one of the Mexican soldiers at the fence had a camera as well [seen in the photo] and that the photos sent to Border Patrol in El Paso may well have come from the Mexican side of the border.
As to why Cordero insists that there are “no official reports” of a joint U.S./Mexican operation targeting the alleged stash site, Plumlee suggests that it may be simply that Cordero was not clued into the operation due to a failure of intelligence coordination within Borer Patrol or because Cordero was not privy to the information or otherwise in a position to “officially” confirm the existence of such an operation.
Clear Picture:
Despite Border Patrol spokesman Coredro’s comments casting doubt on his agency's alleged support role in the raid of the Mexican stash site, it is clear that a number of Plumlee’s past reports, including those involving a U.S. task force operating in Mexico, have since proven to be on the money.
Plumlee claims the Mexican stash site just east of the Columbus/Palomas border crossing has been active for years and is part of a larger narco-trafficking and gun-running network that is operating on both sides of the border in that region.
In fact, in 2009, according to media reports, a narcofosa [a mass grave] containing some 10 bodies was discovered not far from the ranch that Plumlee claims was raided earlier this week. The following year, yet another nacrofosa, this one containing some 18 bodies, was discovered near Palomas.
Prior press reports also claim that Columbus is awash in narco-trafficking activity:
As far back as 2009, the Associated Press published a story about Columbus with the following headline: “Drug smugglers allegedly move into N.M. town: Police say Mexican traffickers’ money revving up local economy.”
Ironically, one of the individuals quoted in that AP story saying he planned to get tough on crime was Columbus Police Chief Angelo Vega, who has since become one of the Columbus 11 (a group of village residents that also includes the mayor and a village trustee) who were indicted earlier this year on gun-running charges.
Plumlee, too, as far back as 2009, was making public his concerns about the illegal activity in Columbus. In a May of that year, Plumlee, who flew numerous missions as a CIA contract pilot during the Iran-Contra era, as evidenced in Congressional testimony and letters, told Narco News that Columbus had become a haven for narco-traffickers, specifically a paramilitary group known as the Zetas — who were using the village and surrounding area as a staging site for arms trafficking.
Plumlee contends that Border Patrol agents stationed in the area also knew this and reported their concerns to the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — specifically related to two homes in Columbus suspected of being used by narco-traffickers as weapons stash sites. It was not until January of 2010, nearly a year later, however, that ATF initiated its investigation into the arms-trafficking activity of the Columbus 11 — which resulted in an indictment in March 2011.
From the ATF’s PR announcement on the indictment in Columbus:
The indictment alleges that, between January 2010 and March 2011, the defendants engaged in a conspiracy to purchase firearms for illegal export to Mexico. During this 14-month period, the defendants allegedly purchased about 200 firearms….
The ATF press release also makes clear that only about 40 of those 200 or more weapons were recovered by the agency. More from the ATF press release, issued at the time of the indictment of the Columbus 11:
The indictment alleges that twelve firearms previously purchased by the defendants later were found in Mexico and were traced back to these defendants. As part of the investigation, every effort was made to seize firearms from defendants to prevent them from entering into Mexico, and no weapons were knowingly permitted to cross the border.
However, a close reading of court pleadings filed in the case against the Columbus police chief, the mayor and the village trustee, and the eight others comprising the Columbus 11, indicates that the ATF press release appears to have left out some important details not so far reported in the media.
Gun Victims:
In addition to the gun running by the Columbus 11, federal court pleadings in the case against them also allege that the corrupt U.S. officials may well have been involved in drug smuggling as well.
U.S. attorneys allege in a court motion filed on March 30, 2011, in U.S. Court in New Mexico that while acting as the Columbus police chief, “[Angelo Vega] … was paid thousands of dollars by [village trustee] Blas Gutierrez and other co-conspirators for 'protection services,' among other things ... [and] conspired to alter a Village of Columbus van to transport 600 pounds of illegal narcotics.”
On another and far more bloody front, there are, to date, according to court pleadings, a total of 15 firearms (three more than reported in the ATF press release) that have been recovered in Mexico and are linked to the Columbus 11 gun-smuggling “conspiracy.” And even more disturbing, court records show, is the fact that six of those 15 weapons were discovered at murder scenes in Mexico involving a total of five victims in Palomas and three victims in Juarez — the murder capital of the drug war. That's eight homicides in Mexico involving only six of the smuggled weapons, with nearly 150 weapons seemingly still unaccounted for as part of the Columbus 11 investigation.
And at least one of those murders, court pleadings show, was supposedly carried out with a weapon (an AK-47 pistol) purchased by one of the Columbus 11 in July 2010 — some six months after ATF initiated its investigation. It was later smuggled into Mexico where it was recovered at a murder scene in Palomas in February of this year — a month prior to the indictment of the Columbus 11 and some 13 months after ATF opened the investigation.
It should be pointed out that ATF is already under the public microscope due to alleged bungled investigative practices that have allowed thousands of illegally purchased firearms to be smuggled into Mexico by warring narco-trafficking organizations.
As part of an operation dubbed Fast and Furious, ATF whistleblowers contend that at least 1,800 firearms illegally purchased in the U.S. were allowed to “walk” across the border in an effort to target the kingpins behind Mexico’s gun-running enterprises.
Two of the guns linked to the Fast and Furious operation allegedly were found at the murder scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, who was shot to death by Mexican border marauders in Arizona late last year.
Frustrated ATF agents testify that their bureau's 'Operation Fast and Furious' let weapons get into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
(Border Patrol Chaplain Mark A. Vander Lee pauses at the memorial service for slain agent Brian Terry on Jan. 21, in Tucson, Ariz.)
One of the frightening things about the U.S. government's war on drugs is that it is being waged by federal bureaucracies. The legend of Elliot Ness notwithstanding, this implies that it is not only fraught with ineptitude but that before it is all over, there are going to be a lot of avoidable deaths.
Witness "Operation Fast and Furious," a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms plan that allegedly facilitated the flow of high-powered weapons into Mexico in the hope that it might lead to the take-down of a major cartel. It did not. But it may have fueled a spike in the murder rate and led to the death of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.
ATF agents are trained to tail buyers of multiple high-powered weapons and find out what they do with them. Fast and Furious broke with this practice, according to a 51-page joint staff report released Wednesday by Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R., Iowa). It cites ATF agents who testified that the plan was to let the buyers disappear, to later recover the weapons at crime scenes, and then to use the serial numbers to identify where they came from. This was supposed to lead to the arrest of not only the Arizona "straw" buyer who had made the purchase for the capos, but to the bust of the big players in drug-trafficking organizations.
The ATF told me that it "can not comment on any of the allegations brought by the Issa-Grassley oversight committee" due to an ongoing investigation, and the Department of Justice did not return a request for comment. But as described in the report, the idea had two major flaws. First, it assumed that it didn't matter who got murdered with those weapons before they were recovered. Second, it was built on the theory that the operation could haul in the big fish. According to the report, the feds were wrong on both counts.
For the local gun merchants who cooperated with the feds and for some of the ATF agents in Arizona, the plan was dubious from the start. An estimated 2,000 of these guns disappeared over the 14-month period of Fast and Furious, and the agents who testified said that this contradicted everything they had learned about never letting a gun "walk"—that is, be taken by a suspicious purchaser without following him and finding out where it went.
One agent described his frustration: "Every day being out here watching a guy go into the same gun store buying another 15 or 20 AK-47s or variants or . . . five or tenDraco pistols or FN Five-seveNs . . . guys that don't have a job, and he is walking in here spending $27,000 for three Barrett .50 calibers . . . and you are sitting there every day and you can't do anything." Agents say that their concerns, expressed to supervisors, were rebuffed. There was even a threat of dismissal if they didn't get with the program.
At the same time, violence was spiking in Mexico. In an email dated April 2, 2010, the group's supervisor reported that in the month of March "our subjects" had purchased 359 firearms and that 958 people were killed in Mexico in drug violence. It was the bloodiest month since 2005 and included 11 policemen in the state of Sinaloa. As another agent interviewed for the staff report said: "We were all sick to death when we realized . . . what was going on or when we saw what was going on by the trends. We were all just, yes, we were all distraught."
Well, not all. The agents interviewed say supervisors viewed the bloodshed with chilling indifference—or worse. As the report summarizes, "An increase of crimes and deaths in Mexico caused an increase in the recovery of weapons at crime scenes. When these weapons traced back through the Suspect Gun Database to weapons that were walked under Fast and Furious, supervisors in Phoenix were giddy at the success of their operation."
Agents say that the loss of life and worries that the guns might eventually be used on U.S. personnel were not addressed because supervisors thought their plan was working. The "sentiment" from higher-ups, according to one agent's testimony, was "if you are going to make an omelet, you need to scramble some eggs." It was only when Agent Terry was murdered and two AK-47s that had "walked" were found at the scene, that the operation came under scrutiny. The ATF subsequently arrested a number of straw purchasers but none of those arrests involved "key players of a criminal syndicate," according to the report. For the record, an ATF official in the report says that the bureau never let guns "walk."
By any measure the 40-year-old war on drugs has been a failure. One unintended consequence is the financing that the sale of prohibited substances provides to gangsters who then buy guns. That's bad enough. But when the ATF puts making the big cartel bust above human life, it's a new low.
MEXICAN crime groups have virtually taken over the pipeline system of Mexico's state oil monopoly, stealing growing amounts of fuel and gaining an important source of new revenue as they fight other gangs and Mexico's government, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, citing Petroleos Mexicanos.
The problem is not new, but it is expanding at a rapid pace, as the crime groups learn technical expertise that can foil electronic monitoring systems. The rise in fuel thefts comes as the government struggles to contain an increase in violence linked to organized crime groups, which have expanded operations from traditional drug trafficking to kidnapping, extortion and protection rackets.
Since December 2006, more than 40,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico, most of it between rival gangs seeking to expand their territory, according to government and newspaper estimates.
The total amount of fuel, including crude oil and gasoline, diesel and liquefied petroleum gas taken during the first four months of the year is slightly greater than the total amount stolen all of last year, Petroleos Mexicanos CEO Juan Jose Suarez Coppel said this week.
During the first four months of this year, these groups stole an estimated $236 million worth of fuel at market prices, Suarez Coppel said. That translates to nearly one million barrels of fuel, according to Pemex, as it is known. Mexico relies on oil sales for about a third of its revenue.
"The increase in theft ... is due to the fact that the pipeline system has been virtually taken over by groups associated with organized crime," Pemex said on its website.
Unless Pemex can slow the thefts, the groups stand to make an estimated $706 million on stolen fuel this year. Pemex reported a first-quarter profit of $332 million.
Suspicion for the thefts has largely fallen on Los Zetas, a gang that has branched out to other types of organized crime and expanded its territorial control along swaths of Mexico's eastern Gulf Coast, the site of much of Pemex's operations.
President Felipe Calderon this week urged Mexican lawmakers to pass tougher laws against fuel thefts, while giving authorities greater power to prosecute by also focusing on buyers of the stolen fuel, which could be gasoline stations or factories that use diesel or bunker fuel, Suarez Coppel said.
Evidence is increasing that California prison gangs are forging close relationships with powerful drug-trafficking cartels in Mexico, according to U.S. law enforcement officials and gang experts who say the relationships have moved into a dangerous new area as Mexican cartels and American gangs swap tactical information, share intelligence and exchange techniques to avoid detection.
"What we're seeing is that highly sophisticated gangs, operating out of the prison system or from cartels in Mexico, are shot-calling, and then farming out the work to local street gangs in California, like the Norteños," state Attorney General Kamala Harris said recently by phone from Los Banos, the scene of a large anti-gang operation June 7.
Increased cooperation across borders and among organized crime syndicates threatens California in new ways, officials say. As evidence, they point to the beginnings of a spillover into this country of the sort of violence that has pitted cartels against the Mexican government and army.
Historically, the term "transnational gang" has been used by academics and law enforcement officials to refer to the spread of such Central American gangs as Mara Salvatrucha into North Carolina, Maryland and Washington, D.C. Those gangs were formed in part by refugees who had fled the wars in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras in the 1980s and were deported back to their home countries. Many formed gangs to protect themselves. But they also exported violence.
A January report from the Congressional Research Service found that transnational gangs continue to expand, and over the past three years Congress has allocated more than $100 million to combat their growth in Central America and the U.S. Harris said the term should be expanded to include the kind of cooperation she said is growing between California prison gangs and Mexican cartels that regularly traffic drugs, weapons and human beings across the U.S. border. "There is good reason to connect the activities of these gang members here with Mexico," Harris said. "I think they're very connected."
The raid
Just after 7 a.m. June 7 in Los Banos, a quiet Central Valley town, a dozen police officers in dark blue jumpsuits, SWAT gear and M-4 assault rifles loaded into four unmarked police trucks in the parking lot of a Carl's Jr. They rolled through a quiet suburb of one-story ranch houses, European automobiles and leafy streets. Weapons ready, they knocked loudly at the door of a nondescript residence, and when a hefty Latino man in his mid-30s answered, they arrested him and quickly moved on.
Before the day was over, an additional 74 men would be taken in raids across the Central Valley in the largest gang sweep in California this year, according to detectives involved in the raid. More than 250 officers from 16 state and federal agencies swept into communities in two counties looking for members of a notorious California prison gang, Nuestra Familia, and its street affiliate, the Norteños.
The operation, "Red Zone," was the latest continuation of a two-year Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement investigation into what Harris calls "the scourge of transnational gangs." Two days later, a similar operation in Tracy netted 30 more alleged gang members.
Harris said she has made tackling transnational gangs a priority since her term began in January. Two major crackdowns, one in May and another in June, have resulted in almost 200 arrests of alleged gang members, and the seizure of about 200 pounds of methamphetamine.
After members of the Arrellano Felix cartel attempted to assassinate five members of a family in Palmdale, near Los Angeles, in February, Harris traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border to announce the expansion of a multiagency task force in Imperial County, along the border, to target transnational gangs.
Tracking gangs
Operation Red Zone was the latest sting in a two-year effort that provides a window into how the shift in gang methods may be taking place.
Officers from the Department of Justice Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement began tracking an increase in Norteño-related slayings in Salinas in October 2009. There, Norteños and members of Nuestra Familia were importing up to 20 pounds of methamphetamine per week and distributing it regionally. As a result, police say, the homicide rate there doubled from 2007 to 2009, increasing to four times the national average.
When law enforcement caught on, many gang members fled. Some sought safety in the flat plains and farms of the Central Valley, in and around Los Banos, in Merced County. Nuestra Familia, meanwhile, was struggling to get a foothold in the rural areas. But the team that was tracking them in Salinas followed them as they moved east.
What they started to see worried them. Nuestra Familia has established networks all over Northern California and well into Oregon, Illinois, Texas, Colorado and Utah.
The gang also had regimental commanders in several California counties. The ties to the East Bay were also deep and well-entrenched. Detectives found connections to Oakland, Tracy, Concord and Morgan Hill on a regular basis.
In the Salinas takedown in May 2010, the team arrested Martin Mentoya, also known as "Cyclone," the regimental commander for the East Bay, responsible for Hayward, Oakland and Richmond. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms later indicted Mentoya on federal charges of conspiracy to distribute narcotics. Mentoya was also charged with two counts of firebombing.
"In Los Banos, they were working with people in the Bay Area to share resources," said Dean Johnston, the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement special agent supervisor and lead investigator on the recent operations. "It's part of a criminal organization; they all agree to help each other."
More distressing still were the ties to Mexico, which were more sophisticated than expected. "They're doing things proactively now to cooperate with each other," Johnston said. "Now there are signs these gangs are working with the cartels, and it's more sophisticated than we've seen before."
This strategic partnership appears to mirror a dramatic rise in methamphetamine production in Mexico. According to Malcolm Beith, author of "The Last Narco," a recent book about the drug war in Mexico, meth production in Mexico has soared since 2003, largely due to U.S. demand. In 2007, the Mexican army seized 22 meth labs. This year, it has already seized 89 -- an increase officials say signals radically increased production. One lab in Sinaloa was producing about 20 tons of meth annually at an estimated street value of $700 million.
Making connections
The Nuestra Familia and Norteño members found what they thought was a shelter from law enforcement in the rural communities of the Central Valley. Many lived in nice suburban homes. It was quiet. The detectives began to piece together a picture of how the two organizations are working together. In the past, Johnston said, the cartels would only sell the narcotics that U.S. buyers could pay for up front. Now, he said, the Mexican cartels "are opening lines by giving them fronted amounts of drugs. They're helping them out, not just selling to them, and that's a big change."
Johnston said the cartel leaders have been reassured somewhat by the reputation Norteños have for being honest about their drug trafficking. Whereas other groups may cut their drugs with other products to increase their profit margins, Norteños do not.
"Nuestra Familia guarantees its product," the detective said. "If people complain about their ability to consume it, they'll return it. They're very strict on the quality of their substance."
This has also reassured the cartels, officials say.
"Recently, these drug-trafficking cartels are making large amounts of meth available to the gangs," Johnston said. "They're saying, 'We know you guys are good for it,' and that's a big difference."
Officials say they have also seen the cartels and the gangs getting more sophisticated. Detectives watched traffickers falsify tags on vehicles to bring cars across the U.S. border from Mexico. A Mexican official with access to vehicle registration was on their payroll. U.S. Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement officials said the Mexican official was getting paid $400 for each vehicle registration change. At least three registrations were changed. Nuestra Familia also began wiring money into bank accounts instead of dealing in cash transactions.
One of the most worrying developments was the sophistication of countersurveillance techniques adopted by the gangs.
"They were driving to meet locations and purposefully trying to avoid detection," Johnston said. "They never used to do that."
The more time and exposure the U.S. gangs had to Mexican cartels, the more they tended to adopt the methodology of the cartels, he said.
"The gangs are doing things now that we've seen the major drug-trafficking organizations do. They're learning our techniques, in part, and they're also learning new stuff from the cartels."
Officials say the effects of the recent raid will be felt statewide. Gangs and the Mexican cartels have national reach. They dabble in a multitude of transjurisdictional crimes, including weapons and the illegal trade of human beings, including children for the sex trade. Throughout, Nuestra Familia helps smooth transactions.
In the Los Banos case, for example, Norteños from Merced had purchased an AK-47, but didn't have ammunition for it. They reached out to Morgan Hill Norteños, who supplied them with bullets.
Johnston said he often sees guns used in crimes in the East Bay that resurface months later three counties away, having essentially been "washed" by crossing the county line.
"This is not just about one region," Harris said. "An operation like this affects the entire state."
The operation, the first of its kind, was launched last Monday by the National Conference of Governors, or Conago, in support of the federal government’s strategy for fighting drug traffickers and other criminal organizations
The coordinated anti-crime operation launched by authorities in Mexico’s 31 states and the Federal District has resulted in the arrests of 3,705 people, the seizure of 131 firearms and the recovery of 1,258 stolen vehicles in six days, officials said Sunday.
The operation, the first of its kind, was launched last Monday by the National Conference of Governors, or Conago, in support of the federal government’s strategy for fighting drug traffickers and other criminal organizations.
“Operation Conago-1” has deployed 310,000 police officers in Mexico’s states to fight crime.
“The fundamental purpose of Conago-1 is to prevent and fight crime, such as vehicle theft, robberies of passengers during transport, kidnappings, the recovery of arms (and the) dismantling of criminal gangs, as well as actions intended to ensure compliance with judicial orders,” Conago and Mexico City’s government said.
Operation Conago-1 is scheduled to end at midnight, and final figures for the operation will be provided on Monday, officials said.
Police have served 721 warrants and other court orders during the operation, officials said.
Last week, the federal government praised the operation and said it would support state officials’ efforts to fight crime.
About 90 percent of the crimes committed in Mexico are violations of state laws, federal security spokesman Alejandro Poire said in a posting on his blog.
“The fight for the security of Mexicans cannot and should not be a policy of just one of the levels of government. Its effectiveness in closing off the ability of criminals to operate is based on its being a permanent effort within the framework of a common front,” Poire said.
The operation launched by Conago opened a “new stage in the fight against crime in which state leaders are reinforcing compliance with their legal obligations in dealing with crime,” Poire said.
A total of 15,270 people died in drug-related violence in Mexico last year, and nearly 40,000 people have died since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the country’s cartels shortly after taking office in December 2006.
Calderon has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers and Federal Police officers across the country to combat drug cartels and other criminal organizations.
The anti-drug operation, however, has failed to put a dent in the violence due, according to experts, to drug cartels’ ability to buy off the police and even high-ranking officials.
Drug smugglers opened fire on U.S. law enforcement officers Sunday morning near the Anzalduas International Bridge after Mission police intercepted a 500-pound load of marijuana, police Chief Leo Longoria said.
U.S. law enforcement officers shot back, Longoria said, and no injuries were reported. Details remained hazy Sunday afternoon, and Longoria couldn’t give further information about the brief shootout.
Less than two weeks ago, U.S. law enforcement officers came under fire near Abram and shot back, injuring three smugglers. On June 9, after Texas Rangers, Border Patrol agents and state game wardens were fired upon, they returned more than 300 rounds. The suspects escaped into Mexico on inflatable rafts.
Sunday’s incident began at 9:55 a.m. when a Mission police cruiser attempted to stop a red Chevrolet pickup on Military Road. Instead of pulling over, the pickup fled and a passenger began throwing bundles of marijuana at the police cruiser.
Six police units, several more from the Department of Public Safety and a Border Patrol helicopter were called to assist. As the pickup fled, a green Chevrolet Avalanche with a young woman behind the wheel began harassing officers, Longoria said.
“She went head-on toward a police vehicle,” Longoria said. “We’re trying to see what her intent was, but obviously it was a very reckless action on her part.”
Officers eventually stopped and arrested the woman, whom Longoria described as a 19- or 20-year-old Mission resident with relatives in Reynosa. Longoria said he couldn’t release the woman’s name.
She was likely to be arraigned Monday on charges of evading arrest and possibly assaulting a police officer, among other crimes, Longoria said.
Meanwhile, the two men inside the red pickup drove straight into the Rio Grande, directly underneath the Anzalduas bridge. People armed with rifles waited on the Mexican side of the river, providing cover as the pickup’s occupants escaped into Mexico.
“During that moment, individuals of the criminal element were displaying long rifles and rounds were fired towards the American side,” Longoria said.
U.S. law enforcement officers returned fire, but no injuries were reported.
Coy Callison doesn't believe he's risking his life when he steers his speedboat into crystal-clear waters that straddle the Texas-Mexico border, hoping to hook a few monster bass in an area marred with drug violence.
His marriage might be a different story.
"My wife threw a fit with us coming down here, but the fishing's been so fantastic," said Callison, a Texas Tech University communications professor, as he loaded his boat into Falcon Lake just after dawn. "I'm almost getting a divorce, basically."
Anglers are again descending in droves on the dammed section of the Rio Grande where American jet-skier David Hartley was presumably chased and gunned down by Mexican pirates last fall — and where shootouts between Mexican soldiers and reputed drug runners have become frighteningly common in the eight months since.
Tourism plummeted after Hartley's Sept. 30 death, devastating Zapata and other shoreline Texas towns. But business has rebounded since January and only gotten stronger as a drought has given visitors access to once hard-to-reach shore areas teeming with bass, tilapia and other fish.
Falcon Lake borders portions of Mexico's Tamaulipas state, which is engulfed by a turf battle between the Gulf Cartel and the Zeta drug gang, both of which are fighting the Mexican military.
On May 8, Mexican marines patrolling their country's side of the lake discovered a staging area for smuggling marijuana into Texas by speedboat on a spit of land that becomes an island when the water is high. A gun battle ensued, killing one marine and 12 alleged Zeta gang members.
Many locals say such incidents are all too common since the Mexican navy recently stepped up patrols on its side of Falcon Lake. Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez ticked off examples from that same week that weren't widely covered in the media, including a heavy gunfire battle on May 12 and a Mexican helicopter that shot a drug suspect three days later.
Those shootouts and Hartley's slaying were in Mexican waters, and violence so far has been contained to that country's side of bluish-green waters stretching 25 miles long and 3 miles across. But many fishing fanatics are heading to Mexico's part of the lake, anyway, saying the chance to reel in bass that grow larger than 10 feet outweighs fears about a drug war that has killed more than 34,000 people in Mexico since 2006.
"Everyone says, 'Just stay out of Mexico.' But we go over there anyway, and it's no problem," said Levi Messer, a 26-year-old who recently drove 6.5 hours to hit Falcon Lake. "You might see a few less people than before, but there's still lots."
A stone's throw from Zapata's municipal boat ramp is a sign with red-and black-lettering proclaiming: "Warning: Crossing into Mexico Could Be Dangerous." Nearby, a smaller sign reminds boaters to report all suspicious activity, this one bearing the seals of the Texas attorney general's office and the U.S. Border Patrol.
Gonzalez erected both signs two months ago. "People can ignore them if they want," he said. "But we could potentially have a situation where someone goes to Mexico to fish and has a problem, and we can't go get them."
Hartley's wife Tiffany said her husband was shot in the head by Mexican pirates after the couple jet-skied past buoys marking the end of U.S. territory to visit a historic Mexican church. His body hasn't been recovered.
In the wake of that shooting, a national fishing tournament scrapped plans to come and two longtime fishing guides quit due to lack of business. Another guide, Jim Edwards, said of the 17 trips he had scheduled for last October, all but five canceled, and three of those only went ahead after he agreed to stay in Texas waters. Things got worse as the year drew to a close.
Paco Mendoza, president of the Zapata County Chamber of Commerce, said that while tourism has yet to fully recover, hotel occupancy rates for weekends, when Falcon Lake attracts the most anglers, are now up 30 to 40 percent since the doldrums following Hartley's shooting.
"A lot of people don't really realize how safe it is here until they actually come and see for themselves," Mendoza said. "We're working toward having our image repaired, but it's a slow process."
Edwards has recently fished within sight of the church the Hartleys were visiting. "The fishing is better than it ever has been," he said. "And that's bringing people back."
The owner of another guide service, Jim Behnken, said that since February, he's only had two days where he wasn't fully booked. He was with visitors from Kansas, fishing in Mexican territory the morning of Hartley's shooting. The outing went so well the group headed back to Mexican waters that same evening — despite what had happened.
"It's a very big lake, and if you don't go looking for trouble, you won't find it," Behnken said.
Speedy Collett is a lodge-owner and guide who had a brush with Mexican pirates even before Hartley's slaying. In April 2010, he was guiding anglers who were approached by armed men after they went ashore on the Mexican side of Falcon Lake to take pictures. The assailants took the memory card from the digital camera of one visitor and checked Collett's phone to ensure he hadn't called anyone running drugs in the area.
"When they figured out we weren't a threat, they let us go," he said. "They told us 'go fish and mind your own business.'"
That's what Collett's been doing ever since, and he said his lodge and guide schedule are full again.
"We're in recovery, but it's fragile," he said. "And if something else happens, we're dead."
Forty years after President Nixon declared war on drugs, the soaring body count from narco-violence in Mexico seems to mock the very notion of progress in that effort. But what is most discouraging about the rampant brutality across our border is that it's largely a consequence of one of the drug war's greatest triumphs.
Colombia's Cali cocaine cartel, once the richest and most powerful crime syndicate in the world, fell as a direct result of U.S.-led law enforcement and diplomatic pressure about a decade ago. Its toppling remains one of the most significant blows inflicted on modern organized crime.
But the giant cartel's collapse left a power vacuum, and Mexican drug gangs are still fighting, with often grisly methods, to determine who will fill it.
The Cali cartel could be as ruthless as any other, but it preferred bribery to violence in the normal course of business. The vertically integrated corporate-style enterprise was run by four billionaires who reigned over a global monopoly that controlled every aspect of the drug trade, from jungle coca production to New York street sales.
In its prime, the cartel was a $7-billion-a-year criminal masterpiece that had bought off an entire country. Colombia was the original "narco-democracy" and a haven for narco-gangsters.
During the 1990s, Cali cartel lawyers rewrote portions of the national constitution outlawing extradition. Drug bosses picked who ran the Cali telephone utility and secretly donated $6 million to elect presidential underdog Ernesto Samper.
Millions of cartel dollars were spent building community police stations. The bosses financed a hospital and a law library. They owned and operated Cali's professional soccer team. In a nod to civic sensibilities, they refrained from carrying out most contract killings within the city limits. Over time, they came to be known as "the gentlemen of Cali."
But the gentlemen were deadly serious about removing impediments to their business. The cartel had its own intelligence force and the capacity to tap any telephone in Cali. Its paid sources included street cops, senators and members of the elite anti-narcotics task force. American drug enforcement agents complained that the cartel seemed always to be a step ahead of them. They called its intelligence wing "the Cali KGB."
Besides a staff of local lawyers, the bosses hired top U.S. defense lawyers, including several former federal prosecutors in Florida and a onetime Justice Department official from Washington, who was later convicted of racketeering.
The cartel accounting department tracked and processed massive volumes of cash. Paper currency from sales around the world was shipped by the ton, often aboard disposable aircraft. Old jetliners, typically stripped-down Boeing 727s, were bought for a few hundred thousand dollars and abandoned on airfields from Bogota to the Amazon jungle after discharging multimillion-dollar loads of $10's, $20's and $100 bills.
A revolving door of former legislators, governors and mayors formed the cartel's lobbying division. They were paid to arrange meetings for the bosses with politicians and to spread the word that the gentlemen of Cali would be generous to friends. Elected officials were constantly wooed with cash, cars, women and luxury vacations.
And the cartel had its own war department. The bosses once paid more than $1 million to hire a team of British mercenaries to hunt down rival drug lord Pablo Escobar, outfitting the commandos with better arms than those of most Colombian military units. They also employed about 150 bodyguards to protect the godfathers and their families.
Armed employees included a small team of sicarios, or assassins, paid to enforce cartel discipline and eliminate security risks. Whenever possible their victims were to "disappear." Unlike beheaded Mexican corpses, often left on prominent display, victims of the Cali cartel typically went into the Cauca River, never to be seen again.
What made the Cali cartel most dangerous, and the greatest menace to U.S. interests, was the way it bought off the Colombian government.
Imagine a country in which its president sends an emissary to apologize to drug lords when American diplomatic pressure forces him to crack down on traffickers. Or where police hotlines for anonymous crime tips are monitored 24/7 by the traffickers themselves. That was Colombia in the 1990s.
So far, there is no evidence that Mexican drug gangs are financing presidential elections. Traffickers are not picking who runs the national telephone company. And gangland lawyers aren't drafting legislation to block extradition of their bosses. Mexico is not the sanctuary that Colombia once was.
But Mexico remains in jeopardy. So does much of Latin America. Unless cocaine demand and its enormous trafficking profits fall, drug war successes are likely to generate similar patterns: simply forcing major narco-operations from one country to another.
Former foreign minister calls for legalizing drugs
Mexican President Felipe Calderón needs to order military troops back to the barracks and halt a losing war against drug cartels, Mexico's former foreign minister told the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board on Tuesday.
"He should not have done it," said Jorge Castañeda, who served in Calderón's predecessor's Cabinet. "He wasn't prepared for it."
Castañeda, who was in Houston Tuesday to promote his new book, said Calderón has framed his war on the cartels as a moral crusade, but it can't be won, and certainly can't be continued by whoever takes office there in 2012.
"It is too costly. We are up to 42,000 dead," he said. "By the end of Calderón's term, more Mexicans will have died in this war than Americans in Vietnam."
As a condition of the retreat, Castañeda said cartels need to get the message that they must crawl back into the underworld, and stop the kidnappings, extortion and mayhem that have rocked Mexico for five years.
If they don't comply, the military needs to be unleashed again to go after them for the murder and mayhem, rather than wasting more resources on drug trafficking crimes, he said.
"You don't sit down with them. You don't talk with them. You don't pardon them," Castañeda said of drug bosses.
The cartels have fought each other as well as against government security forces.
Prior to Calderón taking office, the military was used sparingly in the drug war, which was fought chiefly by civilian police.
"It pretty much has to change; the next president will not be able to continue with Calderón's policy," Castañeda said.
Legalizing drugs in Mexico is the only viable long-term solution, he said.
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox, his former boss, said the same thing when on a Houston visit recently.
"It went too far," Castañeda said of Calderón's war. "If Calderón hadn't messed with it, maybe you wouldn't have this reaction," he said of a number of high-profile Mexicans, from all across the political spectrum, calling for legalization as a result of the war on cartels.
"The question at the end of the day is whether the violence brought the war upon the country, or whether the war brought the violence upon the country," Castañeda said.
He was in Houston to promote his new book, Mañana Forever? Mexico and the Mexicans, which examines flaws in the national character that he says have prevented Mexico from realizing its democratic and social potential.
Morelia, the beautiful colonial state capitol of Michoacan, was the scene of intense security as the under-17 FIFA World Cup Group tournament began this Saturday, with a Mexican 3-1 victory over North Korea with President Calderon attending.
Morelia, one of seven cities hosting group tournaments in Mexco, is the site for Group A play between the national teams of Mexico, the Netherlands, Congo and North Korea.
The sports spectacle is playing out in an atmosphere of insecurity with the threats of violence announced by los Caballeros Templarios in Friday morning’s narcobanners becoming a reality.
Early Saturday morning, hours before the inaugural game, the bodies of nine execution victims were discovered in three separate locations in the coastal municipality of Lazaro Cardenas. Three victims were found in each location.
All nine victims were bound and blindfolded, showed signs of torture and were killed by gunshot wounds to the head. Some of the victims had messages staked to their bodies and signed by los Caballeros Templarios that read “this will happen to everyone that supports El Chango”.
One of the victims with a message was reportedly found alive but died of his injuries in an unnamed hospital.
Saturday evening Patzcuaro was the scene of a shootout between gunmen and Federal Police that left at least eight vehicles burning in blockades and mayhem as public transport passengers and motorists were robbed and attacked, although no fatalities were reported.
Federal Police reported the capture of eight criminals in the Patzcuaro area and the seizure of several weapons. According to Federal Police the incidents began when a police convoy ran into a convoy of gunmen on the Patzcuaro-Tzurumutaro turnoff.
Fourteen execution victims were reported Sunday morning in the Cuenca Lerma-Chapala region of Michoacan.
Four bodies executed with a gunshots to the head were found in the early morning hours of Sunday in the municipality of Sahuayo.
A message signed by los Caballeros Templarios-Guardia Michoacan was left at the site that said the men were executed for “supporting Chango Mendez and Los Zetas” and that “all thieves, extorionists and rapists will be next”.
At 7:30 in the morning two more execution victims were discovered in the municipality of Cojumatlan de Regules and two others were reported in the municipality if Jiquilpan.
The municipalities of Villamar and Brisenas reported one execution each. Like the victims in Sahuayo, all these victims were executed with a gunshot to the head.
Late Sunday morning four more execution victims were reported in the municipality of Tanhuato. These victims were left with messages signed by Los Caballeros Templarios-Guardia Michoacan identifying them as extortionists, thieves and rapists.
Back in the state capitol of Morelia the Congo selection defeated the Netherlands Saturday evening. When the players and coaching staff of both teams arrived at the Hotel Fiesta Inn after the competition, they reported that several of the rooms assigned to both teams had been burglarized and money and personal effects were taken.
Mexico City, Monterrey, Torreon, Guadalajara, Queretaro and Pachuca are the other cities hosting Group tournament play in the 2011 Under 17 World Cup.
ADVIERTEN ALIANZA DE LA FAMILIA CON ZETAS
REFORMA Morelia, México
“WE ASK FOR THE ATTENTION OF ALL MICHOACAN SOCIETY
We express our gratitude to all of Michoacan society for granting us the opportunity to intervene with the problems you have had with the criminal organization of Chango Mendez, and we also ask that you pay attention to our suggestions and recommendations that any person who is discovered and proven to be providing support or communicating with the people of Chango Mendez will suffer punitive measures up to the death penalty based on the infraction. For us Chango Mendez and all the group that follows him are traitors to the fatherland based on their decision to unite with Los Zetas.
And we all know that every traitor to the fatherland deserves the death penalty
attn: the Knights Templar GUARDIANS OF MICHOACAN”
Narcobanners that were hung this past Friday morning in public areas and over roadways in Morelia, the state capitol of Michoacan, and the municipalities of Apatzingan, Patzcuaro and Erongaricuaro and several others within the state warn of an alledged alliance between La Familia and Los Zetas.
Some of the banners included a picture of José de Jesús Méndez Vargas, el Chango Mendez, the current leader of La Familia.
The banners, which included death threats to anyone supporting La Familia, were signed by Los Caballeros Templarios, or the Knights Templar, the self appointed guardians of the state.
After the death of La Familia’s leader, Nazario Moreno “el Chayo” or “el Mas Loco” during a Federal Police operation in the Apatzingan region last December, leaders of La Familia loyal to El Chayo and Servando Gomez Martinez “la Tuta” split from La Familia and formed Los Caballeros Templarios.
Rumors persist in Michoacan that el Chayo did not die at the hands of the Federal forces and, in fact, is leading the effort to cleanse Michoacan of el Chango Mendez’s followers.
According to the Mexican Government Zetas were invloved in the battles between Los Caballeros and La Familia in late May in the rural areas surrounding Apatzingan and neighboring municialpities. Ten Zetas and 36 members of La Familia were detained and presented by the Federal Police during the fighting.
EFE
