Besieged Mexican town cheers arrival of soldiers

[ScienceRocks]

Besieged Mexican town cheers arrival of soldiers
Charlotte Observer ^ | May. 20, 2013 | MARK STEVENSON

Soldiers flood western Mexico to protect towns | CharlotteObserver.com

Mexico's top security officials promised Tuesday that a new federal offensive to rescue towns besieged by the Knights Templar drug cartel in western Michoacan state would stay "until there is security and peace for all state residents."

Interior Secretary Miguel Osorio Chong and his national security team met with local officials in the state capital of Morelia at a time of escalating tensions in Michoacan, where communities mistrustful of state authorities have been creating their own vigilante forces for protection against the cartels.

Michoacan is the Mexican state most visibly dominated by a drug cartel

So we're allowing these people to flood into our nation? No military on our borders to keep these thugs out.

 

[waltky]

Knights Templar cartel stages a coordinated series of ambushes...

MEXICO'S DRUG WAR BOILS OVER AGAIN IN MICHOACAN
Jul 24,`13 -- Mexico's rough western state of Michoacan, producer of avocados and waves of migrants, is proving just as painful a thorn in the side of President Enrique Pena Nieto as it was for his predecessor, Felipe Calderon.

Coming off a stunning success with the capture of Zetas cartel leader Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, Pena Nieto almost immediately was plunged back into the bloody reality of Mexico's drug war this week as gunmen believed to be working for the Knights Templar cartel staged a coordinated series of ambushes on federal police convoys Tuesday. Attacks continued until almost midnight Tuesday, wounding at least five federal police officers. The death toll from the clashes stood at 20 gunmen and four federal police. About 15 people were injured in the attacks, in which gunmen hijacked trucks and buses to block highways.

Pena Nieto sent thousands of troops and federal police to the area two months ago seeking to regain control of the state from the Knights Templar, just as his predecessor periodically deployed forces to Michoacan, which is Calderon's home state. While residents initially cheered the latest arrival and some recently formed self-defense groups agreed to put down their arms, the calm was short-lived. The cartel's deep local roots and proven capacity for violence could make Michoacan the graveyard of Pena Nieto's pledge to reduce drug violence. "They are challenging the Mexican state on an equal footing," said Edgardo Buscaglia, a senior scholar at Columbia University who studies organized crime in Latin America, noting that in many areas of Michoacan the Knights Templar gang is the de-facto law. "You have state vacuums in Mexico that are not covered by any kind of institutional framework ... and the cartels are moving in to capture pieces of the state."

The government has defended its plan to restore order, even though officials have never made very clear what that plan is. "We know that for certain we are on the right path to regaining public safety, even though it's quite clear that won't be easy," Michoacan state Gov. Jesus Reyna said after Tuesday's attacks. So far the government doesn't seem to have a different strategy than Calderon's for the complex, bloody, multi-sided battle in Michoacan that pits the pseudo-religious Knights Templar against police, vigilante groups and the rival New Generation Jalisco cartel. New Generation, which authorities say is aligned with some vigilante groups, is looking to take over Michoacan by casting itself as a cartel interested only in moving drugs and criticizing the Knights Templar for their kidnappings and extortions of everyday people.

Vigilantes tired of crime are fighting back with self-defense groups they call "community police." The emergence of such groups has been one factor in the new flare-up of violence. "They're ambushing federal police and us, the community police," said Misael Gonzalez, a leader of vigilantes in the town of Coalcoman, one of whose squad members was killed in clashes with the Knights Templar earlier this week. "They're desperate and surrounded." On Wednesday, dozens of masked gunmen took over the police headquarters in the Michoacan city of Aquila, brandishing assault rifles and wearing white T-shirts with the slogan "For a Free Aquila" - the same slogan that has been used by self-defense squads that have sprung up in a half dozen Michoacan towns since February to try to kick out the Knights Templar.

MORE

 

[waltky]

Key Gulf cartel leader bagged...

Mexico Captures Cartel Chief; Find 23 Bodies
August 17, 2013 > Mexican authorities have captured a key leader of the Gulf Cartel drug smuggling organization who has been wanted in the United States since 2008.

Mario Ramirez Trevino was arrested Saturday near the border with Texas. The U.S. State Department had offered a $5 million reward for Ramirez Trevino. Also Saturday, at least 23 bodies have been found in western Mexico where local vigilante groups are battling drug cartels for control.

Masked members of the Purepecha Indian community guard unit, from the town of Los Reyes in Michoacan, Mexico

Mexican law enforcement officials said nine men, their hands bound and shot, were found Saturday in Michoacan state where local residents have been fighting the Knights Templar drug cartel.

In neighboring Guerrero state, another 14 bodies were found. None of the victims has been identified and no one has claimed responsibility for the violence. The government of President Enrique Pena Nieto has deployed thousands of troops in the troubled area in an effort to curb the drug-related violence.

Mexico Captures Cartel Chief; Find 23 Bodies

 

[waltky]

Two top drug lord captures give Mexico some confidence...

MEXICO'S NEW GOV'T FOLLOWS OLD DRUG WAR STRATEGY
Aug 18,`13 -- With the capture of two top drug lords in little more than a month, the new government of President Enrique Pena Nieto is following an old strategy it openly criticized for causing more violence and crime.

Mario Armando Ramirez Trevino, a top leader of Mexico's Gulf Cartel, was detained Saturday in a military operation near the Texas border, just weeks after the arrest of the leader of the brutal Zetas cartel near another border city, Nuevo Laredo. Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong took his post in December saying the strategy of former President Felipe Calderon to take out cartel leaders only made drug gangs more dangerous and violent. The new administration would focus less on leaders and more on reducing violence, he said.

Yet the new strategy appears almost identical to the old. The captures of Ramirez and top Zeta Miguel Angel Trevino Morales could cause a new spike in violence with battles over leadership of Mexico's two major cartels. "The strategy of the military is exactly the same," Raul Benitez, a security expert at Mexico's National Autonomous University, said Sunday. "It's not a failure of the new government. It's the reality they face ... Changing strategy is a very slow process. In the short term, you have to act against the drug-trafficking leaders."

Federal security spokesman Eduardo Sanchez insisted at a news conference Sunday that there have been key changes in strategy. Most important, he said, is an unprecedented coordination among security entities, including federal police, the attorney general, branches of the military and state governments. "They have consensus on many activities and because of that we've had many important advances that are exactly what we wanted. And we can talk today about a 20 percent drop in killings related to organized crime compared to the past," he said, citing numbers that many people have questioned, given the continual daily body count in hot spots around the country.

Sanchez said the government expects a readjustment in the cartels with the new vacuum in leadership and has put forces in place in Tamaulipas to help prevent that. He would not say who the government thinks will take over the Gulf cartel. Ramirez, 52, a drug boss in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, had been vying to take over the cartel since the arrest of the gang's top capo, Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, alias "El Coss," last September. Some say Ramirez succeeded by reportedly killing his main Gulf rival, Miguel Villarreal, known as "Gringo Mike," in a gunbattle in March. Villarreal's death is still disputed by some.

MORE

 

[whitehall]

And still they flood over the US border while Homeland Security is busy feeling up LOL's at airports.

 

[Wyatt earp]

Just say no to drugs. problem solved.

 

[waltky]

More dead bodies found in Mexico's drug war zone...

Bodies found in Mexican drug war zone
Mon, Aug 19, 2013 - HOT LAND: Officials reported at least 23 bodies in Michoacan and Guerro states, where the government is struggling to control fighting between cartels and vigilante groups

At least 23 bodies were found in two neighboring states in western Mexico where drug cartels, vigilantes and security forces have been fighting for much of the year, authorities said on Saturday. The Michoacan State Prosecutor’s Office said that nine bodies — hands bound and shot — were found on an abandoned property near the town of Buenavista Tomatlan along with a sign indicating that they may have been members of the Knights Templar cartel. The remote area near the Jalisco State border has suffered a wave of violence for most of the year, as self-defense groups have risen up to battle the Knights Templar, which controls the territory through killings and extortion. Authorities say some of these groups are supported by a rival cartel, Jalisco New Generation, which is also fighting the Knights Templar. The groups deny that.

The sign found next to the bodies read: “For those who continue to support the Knights Templar, we are here, united,” prosecutor’s spokesman Alejandro Arellano said. The note was signed with the initials of the New Generation, as well as the initials GC, indicating a community-based, self-defense group. The government of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto sent thousands of troops and federal police to the area in May to regain control of the state. While residents initially cheered the arrival and some self-defense groups agreed to put down their arms, the calm was short-lived. Even as the government claims that killings across Mexico are down, it has struggled to come up with an effective strategy for Michoacan and neighboring Guerrero State, an area known as Tierra Caliente, or Hot Land, for its climate.

The government’s response so far has mirrored that of Pena Nieto’s predecessor, former Mexican president Felipe Calderon, who started his drug offensive as president by sending troops to Michoacan in 2006 and periodically thereafter, with little result. The Knights Templar launched a coordinated attack on federal police in Michoacan last month, killing at least four officers and wounding at least five more. They also killed one of Mexico’s highest-ranking navy officers and a bodyguard last month when they ventured onto a local road in Michoacan to get around a highway roadblock. At about the same time, residents in Guerrero were forced to flee their villages because of drug violence and self-defense forces formed in some parts of the state.

Authorities in Guerrero on Saturday said they found 14 bodies, eight in San Miguel Totolapan in Tierra Caliente and six in a mass grave near the colonial tourist town of Taxco. The state prosecutor’s office said in a statement that five of the bodies in San Miguel Totolapan were found in the back of a Ford pick-up in military-style dress and with heavy arms and munitions, including a grenade. The statement said three more young men were found shot to death in the same town, but did not specify where. In Taxco, authorities discovered the remains of six people, the skeletal remains of three and three more corpses in a state of advanced decay, according to state government spokesman Jose Villanueva Manzanarez.

Bodies found in Mexican drug war zone - Taipei Times

 

[waltky]

33 Mutilated Corpses Found Buried In Mexico...

33 mutilated corpses found buried in Mexico drug lands
22 Nov.`13 ~ Bodies showing signs of torture were discovered on border of states where rival cartels operate

At least 33 mutilated corpses have been found buried in an area of western Mexico where drug cartels are battling each other, officials said on Friday, the latest in a series of grisly finds amid a scourge of gang-related violence. The bodies, which showed signs of torture, were found in 19 ditches in La Barca, on the border between the states of Michoacan and Jalisco, where a clutch of rival cartels operate.

Forensic technicians search for human remains in a mass grave on the banks of the Lerma river in La Barca.

Experts began searching the area based on comments from 25 municipal police who were detained, accused of links to criminal organisations. Some of them had said corpses of people killed by rival gangs were dumped in the area. “It looks like a minefield ... The excavations have been carried out based on the declarations of the detained police,” an official at the attorney general’s office told Reuters, declining to be identified for security reasons. “We haven’t ruled out that there could be more bodies.”

Mexico has suffered from a wave of drug-related violence, with about 1,000 people a month dying in gangland killings. About 80,000 people have died since 2007 in cartel violence. President Enrique Pena Nieto has sought to shift the focus away from drug violence that dominated his predecessor’s term and onto economic reforms he is seeking to push through Congress. Pena Nieto vowed to focus on reducing violent crime and extortion rather than going head to head with drug bosses. However, the steady stream of killings has continued unabated.

33 mutilated corpses found buried in Mexico drug lands - World News | Latest International News Headlines | The Irish Times - Fri, Nov 22, 2013

 

[ScienceRocks]

See what our war on drugs is doing?

Time to legalize and tax!

 

[Katzndogz]

Legalize drugs, start with krocidil, then spice, then bath salts.

 

[Gracie]

Templar Knights??? That is this cartels name?? Oy.

 

[waltky]

Knights Templar Federico "N" captured...

Mexico arrests Knights Templar Cartel leader linked to 35 murders
March 27, 2017 -- Mexico's National Security Commission, or CNS, said Federal Police officers captured a leader of the Knights Templar Cartel who is connected to at least 35 murders.

The CNS said the suspect -- identified as Federico "N" -- is accused of kidnapping and extortion and is considered a generator of violence linked to 35 homicides. He was arrested in the state of Nayarit and then taken to a maximum security prison in the state of Sinaloa, the CNS said on Saturday.

The Knights Templar Cartel, which is made up of remnants of the splintered La Familia Michoacana drug cartel, mainly operates in the state of Michoacán on Mexico's Pacific coast, south of Guadalajara.

When arrested, the suspect had fake documents in which he was identified as Raúl Ochoa, officials said. The CNS said authorities seized about 20 properties belonging to the suspect, which officials believe were illegally taken from their rightful owners or bought with illicit funds.

Mexican security forces said they captured a leader of the Knights Templar Cartel -- identified as Federico "N" -- who is accused of kidnapping, extortion and violence linked to 35 homicides. He is also accused of controlling the transport of drugs along Mexico's Pacific coast.​

The suspect is also accused of controlling the transport of drugs on Mexico's Pacific coast coming from South America. Mexico's Federal Police has arrested dozens of Knights Templar Cartel members in recent years, crippling the organization's leadership.

Mexico arrests Knights Templar Cartel leader linked to 35 murders