Two cartels have issued a threat to the governor of San Luis Potosí, warning that his government should cooperate because they plan to “seize the entire state.”
The Gulf Cartel and the Cartel de los Alemanes made the threat to Governor Juan Manuel Carreras in a video that has been widely shared on social media.
Surrounded by four armed and masked men, a suspected cartel member reads out a message to the Institutional Revolutionary Party governor.
“Governor Juan Manuel Carreras López, San Luis Potosí will burn in the last year of your six-year term.”
(The final year of Carrera’s term began in late September.)
“We recommend that you speak with your narco-government and tell your security chiefs that they can negotiate the state’s peace with us.”
The masked orator then told Carreras that if his government reaches a deal with the two allied cartels, current officials won’t have to go into hiding when they leave office next year.
“If you don’t help us, don’t get in our way because we’re coming with all the support of the Vaquero [the Cowboy] to seize the entire state. Stop screwing around. Yours sincerely, Cartel de los Alemanes and the Gulf Cartel,” he said.
The Vaquero is believed to be Evaristo Cruz, the suspected leader of the Gulf Cartel in Tamaulipas. He is wanted in both Mexico and the United States.
Earlier in the video, the orator announced that the Gulf Cartel and the Cartel de los Alemanes were now in the Huasteca region of San Luis Potosí “cleansing the towns” of undesirable elements so that “everything is in order.”
He told local residents to not be alarmed if they see cartel members “working” because they have no problems with them.
However, the speaker issued a threat to Huasteca region state police chief Samuel Ruiz Montealvo, telling him that he will pay with his life if he and his officers cause problems for the cartels.
“It’s better that you align [yourself with us]” or ask the San Luis Potosí security minister for a transfer, he said.
Just before he made that remark, one of the armed cartel thugs points the barrel of his gun directly at the camera.
The cartel mouthpiece also issued a threat to army Colonel Rolando Solano Rivera, telling him that if he continues sending “intelligence” people to the Altiplano region, “we’ll disappear” them.
“We’ve already located the assholes,” he said, adding that the cartels haven’t forgotten a clash with the army in the municipality of Charcas in late October in which one Gulf Cartel member was killed, two were arrested and weapons were seized.
The orator also told Solano that not all soldiers are “faithful to the homeland,” implying that some are in cahoots with cartels.
The video is the second in recent months from the two gangs. In August, a man who identified himself as cartel leader Alfredo Alemán issued threats to San Luis Potosí police director José Guadalupe Castillo Celestino and Security Minister Jaime Ernesto Pineda Arteaga.
The Gulf Cartel, one of Mexico’s oldest organized crime groups that remains active today, operates in at least 19 municipalities in San Luis Potosí, according to navy reports.
The Cartel de los Alemanes, an offshoot of the Zetas cartel, is a new criminal organization that announced its existence earlier this year.
