The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) has announced its arrival in El Volantín, a small town in Jalisco near Lake Chapala, and it doesn’t plan on leaving any time soon.
A video showing a group of some 20 armed men in bulletproof vests, some of which were emblazoned with the CJNG initials, circulated on social media on Tuesday.
“We’ve arrived in Volantín and we’re not leaving,” some of the men shout. One declares that they are all members of the “four-letter” cartel, which is based in Jalisco but operates in most Mexican states.
The video was filmed on Juárez street one block from the main square in El Volantín, reported the newspaper El Universal, which used Google Street View to confirm the location. The town, home to approximately 500 people, is located next to the El Volantín dam in the municipality of Tizápan el Alto, which borders Michoacán.
“¡Ya llegamos y no nos vamos!”.
👇 pic.twitter.com/jvmtzODME6— Héctor de Mauleón (@hdemauleon) June 21, 2022
The nearby towns of Mazamitla, Jalisco, and San José de Gracia, Michoacán, are considered strongholds of the CJNG, whose leader Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes is a wanted man in Mexico and the United States.
Recent violence in the region has been attributed to a turf war between the CJNG and a crime group called Los Pájaros de la Sierra. The Tizápan el Alto police chief was ambushed and killed earlier this month while traveling on a local highway.
Authorities haven’t commented publicly on the new CJNG video, which El Universal sources say was filmed sometime during the past two weeks.
Jalisco cartel henchman have shown off the criminal organization’s immense firepower in many other videos posted to social media. One that appeared online in 2020 showed scores of heavily-armed and masked men shouting support for “El Mencho” while standing alongside a long convoy of armored vehicles.
With reports from El Universal and Infobae
