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Jailed ex-governor, wife divorce after charges of fraud, embezzlement

February 3, 2020

duarte and macias — When love was young.

After 20 years of marriage, the jailed ex-governor of Veracruz, Javier Duarte, and Karime Macías Tubilla have finalized their divorce — giving her a tidy alimony payment every month.

Currently fighting extradition in England, Macías filed for divorce in May of last year. She is wanted in Veracruz for her alleged participation in a 112-million-peso (US $5.9-milion) embezzlement scheme.

Duarte is currently serving a nine-year prison sentence for money laundering and links to organized crime. He conceded custody of their three children to Macías, who is living in the exclusive Chelsea neighborhood in London after being released on bail in October.

He also committed to a monthly alimony payment of 180,000 pesos (US $9,600), which will be guaranteed by a mortgage on a property in Veracruz for 2.16 million pesos, corresponding to one year of the provision. Duarte acquired the property before the two were married.

In addition to the charges of fraud brought by the Veracruz Attorney General’s Office for which Macías faces extradition, the government’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) has filed new charges against her for the embezzlement of 228 million pesos.

She is accused of having diverted funds from the Veracruz family services agency (DIF) to as many as 26 shell companies during her husband’s term as governor.

Duarte was arrested in Guatemala in April 2017 and extradited to Mexico three months later.

He and Macías allegedly built a multi-million-dollar real estate empire made up of over 90 properties in Mexico, the United States and Spain.

Macías will appear before a judge in London in November to hear a ruling on her extradition case.

Sources: Milenio (sp), Debate (sp)

Warm reception for AMLO in Campeche overshadows muted dissent

Jack Gooderidge

February 3, 2020

AMLO gets a hero's welcome in Campeche. jack gooderidge

On Saturday, in just one of many similar appearances we can expect in the coming months, President López Obrador took the stage in Campeche’s capital, one of the cities due to be affected by his pre-emptive legacy project, the Maya Train.

Although he is a universally popular president across Mexico at a time when disdain and even disgust toward the political class in Latin America is at an all-time high, a question mark hung over his visit to Campeche, a state and city split by the implications of a revolutionary train network unifying the southeastern communities.

He needn’t have worried. A 20-meter walk to the stage from the motorcade took the same number of minutes, punctuated by praise-singing loyalists eager to meet his eye and shake his hand.

Amid the extensive jubilation you may be forgiven for walking away believing that AMLO’s train project lacks the contention needed to justify a presidential tour of the Yucatán. Banners declaring “Campeche with AMLO,” “Yes to the Maya Train” and “We are with you” may just about manage to obscure the groups beyond the awning — groups with concerns that aren’t as lyrical as those of the yay-sayers or perhaps just too long to fit on their banners.

The Maya Train, a project devised by Mexico’s leftist, pragmatic and socially minded president as a way of unifying the Yucatán, leveraging coastal tourism inland and connecting communities across the region, may not be as one-nation as we are led to believe.

Tensions forged in the ever-growing milieu of emotion have been heard and dismissed just as quickly as they’ve been voiced. Indigenous communities, most recently those from Calakmul and Xpujil, have been speaking against what they see as a wedge being driven through their semi-autonomous, traditionally maintained towns and villages. Fonatur (the National Tourism Promotion Fund) brushed off that claim as “not indigenous communities complaining but just a small group of people that are trying to oppose the project.”

The same is true of those protesting in the shadow of the project’s ecological impact. Researchers, standing on the shoulders of conservationists, agricultural workers, and residents of Mexico’s vast jungles, have claimed the Maya Train will be an “environmental crime.” That accusation was seemingly considered through a number of consultations throughout December in the Yucatán, but when images of construction were concurrently leaked it became hard for residents to see them as anything other than coy rhetoric.

This could be considered the most problematic aspect of the project. Whether the train will devastate the region ecologically or not, whether communities will be displaced, whether tourism will benefit or shake the inland towns, all will become moot if residents of the Yucatán doubt that the conversation is being had in anything other than a meaningful way.

Two “referendums” in tandem with his astronomical polling averages have been AMLO’s mandate and his springboard but both have been plagued with controversy over legitimacy and breadth. In the new year, for AMLO to be able to endorse the Maya Train with a clear and open conscience he’ll have to create a dialogue that not only debates the hard truths of his infrastructural reform, but convinces the people it affects that the conclusion is not already carved in stone.

It’s hard to know whether or not this divide could widen into a serious social conflict but the tension is born from a dynamic we know all too well from the history books.

The imposition of developmental initiatives into otherwise remote areas is, more often than not, a decision taken lopsidedly by those it doesn’t stand to affect, and as long as scenes like those in Campeche continue, it seems unlikely that the dissenters will be able to raise their voice to meet the cheering crowd.

Jack Gooderidge writes from Campeche.

Climate change cited as hotter, wetter weather forecast for 2020

MND Staff

February 3, 2020

sunny weather — While the north cools off, the heat in central and southern Mexico will be intense this week. (File photo)

Temperatures will be higher than average in Mexico this year and more rain will fall than in 2019, according to the head of the National Meteorological Service (SMN).

Jorge Zavala told the news agency EFE that the SMN is forecasting hotter than average weather not just this year but over the entire decade.

“We’ll have temperatures similar to those we had in the past decade,” he said.

The last six years were the six hottest on record in Mexico and climate change is to blame, according to Zavala.

After highlighting that 2019 was the second hottest year since 1953, with an average nationwide temperature of 22.4 C, the SMN chief predicted that climate change will also push temperatures above average this year.

The hotter weather will likely cause damage to some crops and harm some wildlife species, Zavala said.

Without providing a specific prediction about how much wetter this year will be compared to 2019, the meteorologist said that rainfall will increase in 2020. Rain is sorely needed in many parts of Mexico that are currently affected by drought after precipitation declined last year.

February is forecast to be drier than previous years, but higher than average rainfall is predicted for March.

More fires and floods can be expected this year as a result of the hotter and wetter weather, Zavala said.

“A fire needs favorable conditions to spread and they include very high temperatures. . .” he said.

“We’re now facing new climatic conditions in which the temperatures are higher than before and they’re not expected to go down,” the meteorologist added.

Source: EFE (sp)

Ignoring pledge to animal advocates, Puebla announces bullfighting arena

Cody Copeland

February 3, 2020

Despite having made a campaign commitment to respect the rights of animals, Puebla Governor Miguel Barbosa has announced the construction of a new bullfighting arena and cockfighting ring in the capital city.

“In a few weeks the secretary of tourism is going to present the plan for the Puebla State Fair, with the lineup for the bullfights, the lineup for the cockfights, a community theater [and] folk art,” he said.

He emphasized that the fair will be “grand, not the dinky thing it has become.”

And part of that return to greatness will be the construction of new facilities for events Barbosa had previously pledged would not occur during his administration.

“Immediately afterwards we’re going to begin construction on the foundations for the Plaza de Toros [bullfighting arena] and a palenque [cockfighting ring],” adding that it wouldn’t be like “the jury-rigged version it is today. Puebla deserves better than a bullfighting arena made of boards and sticks.”

During his 2018 campaign for governor, Barbosa, of the Morena party, signed a document promising to honor seven proposals by animal rights activists including one to “restrict violent events involving animals.”

He lost that bid to National Action Party (PAN) candidate Marta Erika Alonso in a highly contested election for which suspected irregularities had triggered a recount.

However, Barbosa ended up winning a special election held after Alonso and her husband were killed in a helicopter crash two weeks after she took office.

In response to his announcement, animal rights activists created a petition campaign on Change.org to put a stop to the construction of the bullfighting arena.

The petition had 2,336 signatures as of Monday afternoon.

Source: Reforma (sp)

Narco killings at ‘epidemic proportions’ in Mexico: DEA

MND Staff

February 3, 2020

Drug-related murders in Mexico are at “epidemic proportions,” the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says in a new report.

In its National Drug Threat Assessment 2019 report, the DEA said that while narco killings “continue to reach epidemic proportions. . .there is little spillover violence in the United States” because U.S.-based members of Mexican drug cartels “generally refrain from inter-cartel violence to avoid law enforcement detection and scrutiny.”

However, acts of violence related to Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) do occur in parts of the United States, particularly along the southwest border, the federal agency said.

The DEA said that Mexican TCOs remain the greatest criminal drug threat to the United States, asserting that no other groups are currently positioned to challenge them.

Formerly headed by convicted trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the Sinaloa Cartel maintains “the most expansive footprint” in the United States, while the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) has become the second most dominant Mexican cartel over the past few years, the report said.

Among the six Mexican TCOs identified by the DEA as having the greatest drug trafficking impact on the United States are also the Beltrán Leyva organization, the Juárez Cartel, the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas.

“Mexican TCOs continue to control lucrative smuggling corridors, primarily across the southwest border,” the DEA said, explaining that they move drugs into the United States in hidden compartments in cars and trucks, via subterranean tunnels, on freight trains and passenger buses and by using “mules” who cross into remote parts of the U.S.

To a lesser extent, cartels also use maritime vessels, ultralight aircraft and drones to get narcotics into the country, the agency said.

“. . . [Mexican cartels] continue to expand their criminal influence by engaging in business alliances with other TCOs, including independent TCOs, and work in conjunction with transnational gangs, U.S.-based street gangs, prison gangs, and Asian money laundering organizations,” the report said.

“Mexican TCOs export significant quantities of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, and fentanyl into the United States annually. . .[They] maintain drug distribution cells in designated cities across the United States that either report directly to TCO leaders in Mexico or indirectly through intermediaries.”

The DEA said that the criminal activity of Mexican cartels in the United States is mainly overseen by Mexican nationals or U.S. citizens of Mexican origin.

“U.S.-based TCO members of Mexican nationality enter the United States legally and illegally and often seek to conceal themselves within densely populated Mexican-American communities. Mexican TCO members operating in the United States can be traced back to leading cartel figures in Mexico, often through familial ties,” the report said.

The DEA said that the Sinaloa Cartel, now led by El Chapo’s sons in an alliance with veteran trafficker Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, has distribution hubs in U.S. cities that include Phoenix, Los Angeles, Denver, Atlanta and Chicago, while the CJNG is “one of the most powerful and fastest growing cartels” in both Mexico and the United States.

Headed by Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, who has a US $10 million price on his head, the CJNG smuggles illicit drugs into the United States by accessing various trafficking corridors along the southwest border including Tijuana, Juárez, and Nuevo Laredo,” the DEA said.

“CJNG’s rapid expansion of its drug trafficking activities is characterized by the willingness to engage in violent confrontations with Mexican government security forces and rival cartels. Like most major Mexican TCOs, CJNG is a poly-drug trafficking group, manufacturing and/or distributing large amounts of methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl. CJNG reportedly has presence in at least 24 of 32 Mexican states,” the report said.

Noting that all of the Beltrán Leyva brothers have been killed, the DEA said that splinter groups and remnants of their organization continue to operate in various parts of Mexico, including the states of Guerrero, Morelos, Nayarit and Sinaloa.

The two most prominent splinter groups, Los Rojos and Los Guerreros Unidos, operate independently “due in part to their role in the heroin trade,” the report said. Beltrán Leyva-affiliated splinter groups rely on “loose alliances” with the CJNG, the Juárez Cartel and Los Zetas for access to smuggling routes, the DEA said.

The federal agency said that the Juárez Cartel continues to influence drug consumer markets in El Paso, Denver, Chicago and Oklahoma City, while the Gulf Cartel holds key distribution hubs in Houston and Detroit.

Formed as an independent cartel in 2010 after breaking away from the Gulf Cartel, Los Zetas has lost significant influence in recent years due to “pressure from rival cartels, Mexican law enforcement, and internal conflicts,” the DEA said.

However, its members continue to “traffic methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine, and heroin through key distribution hubs in Laredo, Dallas, and New Orleans.”

Mexico News Daily

Sinaloa cathedral closed as El Chapo’s daughter weds nephew of cartel figure

MND Staff

February 3, 2020

The groom, center, with El Chapo's daughter and a guest at the wedding in Culiacán.

The daughter of convicted drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán married the nephew of a prominent cartel figure in a lavish ceremony behind closed doors at the cathedral in Culiacán, Sinaloa, late last month.

The newspaper Reforma reported that Alejandrina Gisselle Guzmán Salazar, El Chapo’s eldest daughter, wed Édgar Cázares on January 25 at a ceremony attended by relatives and members of the Sinaloa Cartel.

Cázares’ aunt is Blanca Margarita Cázares Salazar, suspected financial operator for Sinaloa Cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. Known as the “narco’s empress,” Cázares Salazar was sanctioned by the United States treasury in 2007 for her “sophisticated money laundering apparatus” and links to Zambada and another cartel figure.

Wedding guests arrived at the cathedral, which was cordoned off with yellow tape, in armored SUVs and luxury vehicles, Reforma said. Armed men guarded the church as the nuptials took place.

The bride’s half-brother, Ovidio Guzmán López, who was arrested in Culiacán in October but promptly released after cartel gunmen responded to his capture with a wave of attacks, was among those reportedly in attendance.

Ovidio Guzmán, left, was reported to be among the guests at the wedding of his half-sister.

A priest close to the families of both Guzmán Salazar and Cázares conducted the ceremony, Reforma said. The bishop of Culiacán, Jonás Guerrero, reportedly approved the cathedral’s lockdown for the service.

One video posted to social media shows El Chapo’s daughter dancing with her new husband to live music at a reception held at a Culiacán venue called Álamo Grande. Another shows Guzmán Salazar dancing with her mother, Alejandrina Salazar Hernández, who was Guzmán’s first wife.

The well-known norteño band Calibre 50 and the Grammy-nominated singer Julión Álvarez provided the soundtrack for the festivities.

Guzmán Salazar, 38, is a businesswoman and holder of the rights to the brand name “El Chapo,” which is used to sell clothing and footwear. She recently announced plans to sell beer using Guzmán’s nickname, which means “shorty.”

Cázares allegedly has his own links to the Sinaloa cartel, including “El Mayo” Zambada, who runs the organization along with Guzmán’s sons.

News of the couple’s wedding at the cordoned-off Culiacán cathedral triggered criticism from both ordinary Mexicans, including local residents, and federal lawmakers.

The cathedral in Culiacán: ‘church has had a long relationship with cartels.’

“The church is for everyone,” a woman identified only as Sofía told the news agency Reuters. “. . . [It] shouldn’t give privileges to anyone.”

Another woman, Francisca, told Reuters that “with money, you can close any building” in Culiacán. “It’s unfair,” she added.

Verónica Juárez, leader of the Democratic Revolution Party in the lower house of Congress, said that the closed-door ceremony was evidence of the protection and impunity organized crime enjoys in some parts of Mexico.

Authorities were aware of what was happening at the Culiacán cathedral on January 25 and “should have acted,” given that armed men were in the area, she said.

The leader of the ruling Morena party in the Chamber of Deputies said that the wedding was indicative of the “power” of organized crime.

“. . .I believe that it shouldn’t have happened,” Mario Delgado said, adding that an investigation should look at why it was allowed to take place.

Gerardo Fernández Noroña, a deputy with the Labor Party, a coalition partner of Morena, said that Sinaloa has been a “lifelong” seat of “narco-power” and that things need to change.

Even though it was widely criticized for releasing Ovidio Guzmán, the lawmaker said that there is a willingness within the government to “break up” the power held by Mexico’s notorious cartels. However, he predicted that pacifying the country will take five years.

Analysts also weighed in on the wedding between Guzmán and Cázares.

“It is a reminder of how deeply embedded and powerful the Guzmán family remains in Sinaloa’s society. They are effectively part of the elite,” Falko Ernst, senior Mexico analyst for the International Crisis Group, told the newspaper The Guardian.

Rodolfo Soriano-Nuñez, a sociologist who studies the Mexican catholic church, told The Guardian that the church has had a relationship with criminal groups for about 30 years.

“Locking down the cathedral and pretty much giving it away” looks very bad “and forces one to raise all sorts of questions regarding the decision-making process.”

Source: Reforma (sp), Reuters (en)

Second death at Michoacán butterfly reserve; guide’s body found

Cody Copeland

February 3, 2020

Monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico.

Michoacán authorities are investigating another death connected to the El Rosario monarch butterfly sanctuary after a part-time tour guide at the reserve was found dead on Saturday.

The body of Raúl Hernández Romero, 44, was found just three days after that of the park’s director, Homero Gómez González, was discovered in a well two weeks after he had gone missing.

Hernández’s body had been attacked with a sharp object. He was last seen on January 27 in the municipality of Angangueo, where the butterfly sanctuary is located. His wife reported him missing on January 31.

Authorities said they had not found any evidence to connect the two deaths to each other or to their conservation work.

Their deaths occurred during the area’s high season for tourists, who come to see the monarch butterflies after they arrive from Canada and the United States to winter among the oyamel trees in remote stretches of Michoacán’s forests.

Hernández led tours of the El Rosario sanctuary, showing Mexican and foreign tourists the dense clusters and bright orange clouds of butterflies and informing them of the insects’ journey and importance to the ecosystem.

The Michoacán Attorney General’s Office (FGE) said that the activists’ conservation work was among “several lines of investigation” it is following to shed light on their deaths.

Initial reports had said that the most likely cause of Gómez’s death was drowning. But the FGE released a statement on Thursday saying that an autopsy of the body had revealed signs of head trauma.

Illegal logging interests with connections to organized crime have been at odds with conservation efforts in recent years, as environmental activists worked to ban logging from Michoacán’s butterfly sanctuaries.

The region lost 461 hectares of forest to illegal logging between 2005 and 2006, posing a significant threat to the largest butterfly migration in the world.

Despite calls from the public and even the federal Secretariat of the Environment (Semarnat) to clear up facts in the case and find those responsible, statistics show that such outcomes are highly unlikely.

A 2018 study by the nonprofit Impunidad Cero (Zero Impunity) found that the possibility of a crime being reported, investigated and solved in Mexico was just 1.14%.

The organizations Amnesty International and Global Witness warned in October that Mexico is growing increasingly dangerous for environmental activists.

“All of these losses are horrible,” said regional director for the Natural Protected Areas Commission (Conanp) Gloria Tavera. “All of these people are important.”

Sources: Washington Post (en), Reforma (sp)

Dengue cases up 62% in January; 19 deaths reported

MND Staff

February 1, 2020

The number of confirmed dengue cases increased 62.7% in January compared to the same month last year, federal health authorities announced.

The epidemiology department of the Secretariat of Health said that 441 confirmed cases of the mosquito-borne tropical disease were reported to January 30. There were 271 reported cases in the same period last year.

The department said that 223 cases were considered serious while the other 208 were not. Almost three-quarters of the confirmed cases were concentrated in six states – Veracruz, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Guerrero, Jalisco and Yucatán.

The epidemiology department also reported that dengue is suspected as the cause of 19 deaths this year in Veracruz, Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas.

In addition, it said there are 6,096 possible dengue cases that have not yet been confirmed. The number is 149% higher than the 2,446 possible cases detected in January 2019.

Cases of dengue, which is spread by the bite of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, surged last year, with more than 16,000 confirmed infections in the first 8 1/2 months of the year alone.

The federal government came under fire after it was revealed that health authorities didn’t spend a single peso on insecticides until early August.

However, Dr. Ruy López Ridaura, director of the National Center for Disease Prevention and Control Programs, said in September that mosquito spraying had occurred throughout the whole year in parts of the country susceptible to dengue outbreaks, explaining that state authorities used their own funds to purchase insecticides.

Earlier the same month, a senior health official accused insecticide vendors of conducting a disinformation campaign that linked the outbreak of dengue fever to the federal government’s later than usual purchase of the product.

Source: El Financiero (sp), Xataka (sp)

Wedding plans lead to a bureaucratic nightmare at the registry office

MND Staff

February 1, 2020

wedding — To get this far, some bureaucratic hurdles must be crossed.

As far as bureaucratic nightmares go, at least it was an interesting one.

My Mexican partner and I left our apartment just before sunrise armed with all the documentation we believed we needed to secure the services of a juez, or judge, as an official who conducts civil marriages, among other duties, is known.

Just after the 8:00am opening time, we arrived at a bare-bones registry office in the Mexico City borough of Benito Juárez, where we were quickly attended to by a polite lady who sat us down in her office and looked through the wad of paperwork we had brought in.

She quickly identified the first problem: the main marriage application form – which we had downloaded from an official Mexico City government website – was not the right one. We would instead have to provide exactly the same details on an extremely similar, if not identical form, of which, of course, the registry had only one copy.

No need to worry – a few print shops that likely survive on the photocopy trade generated by unprepared registry-goers are dotted along the very same street.

However, that wasn’t the only problem that the registry official identified.

She also told us that we were missing a document called Certificado de No Registro de Deudor Alimentario Moroso, which serves as proof that neither of the parties wishing to enter into marriage are in arrears for the upkeep of any children they might have.

The certificate, we were told, couldn’t be issued at the registry we were currently at but could be obtained at literally any other registry in any of the 16 boroughs of the capital.

So, after a quick trip to a copy shop we taxied to another registry in the historic center of Coyoacán, located just a few kilometers from the Benito Juárez registry on Parque de los Venados, which means Park of the Deer. It has no real deer but does boast a statue of one.

Despite the morning traffic, we arrived at the Coyoacán registry fairly quickly and painlessly obtained the certificates we both required (turns out that neither of us has been hiding offspring from each other).

After a quick stop to caffeinate, we returned to the Benito Juárez registry, confident that we would now have no problem locking in a juez for a marriage ceremony on a Saturday in the middle of April.

My partner had been to the registry late last year and was told to return in January in order to meet with the juez and firm up the date.

After a long wait (we were told the judge was occupied although a glance into her office appeared to suggest otherwise) we were ushered into the juez’s domain and seated before her.

After a perfunctory flick through our documents she declared, “Ustedes realmente se quieren casar?” (you really do want to get married?), which we interpreted as a sign that our paperwork was now in order.

So, she said, when’s the big day?

We told her the date and explained it was a Saturday, to which she quickly retorted that jueces don’t normally perform marriages on a weekend, and that in her case it was completely out of the question because she had recently had knee surgery and Saturday had been set aside as her main rehab day.

Picking up her walking stick for emphasis, she said: “Con todo gusto les caso de lunes a viernes” (I’ll gladly marry you from Monday to Friday) before specifying the hours during which she could offer her services.

After telling her that we had already made arrangements for a Saturday ceremony, she suggested that we try our luck at another registry in Benito Juárez, the borough in which we are getting married. (I had believed that there was only one registry per borough – it turns out there are several.)

After my partner made a quick call to her brother that confirmed that he and his wife had been married on a Saturday by a juez from Registry No. 10 on Patriotismo Avenue – which was one of the registries suggested to us – we embarked on yet another taxi journey through the traffic-clogged streets of the Mexican megalopolis.

We didn’t initially tell the lady who called us into her office that we had come from another registry but simply informed her of what we hoped to achieve – find a juez for a Saturday service in April.

That shouldn’t be a problem, she told us, before dropping a bombshell: “We don’t actually have a juez who performs marriages here, we use the one at Registry No. 51. Let me give her a call.”

Registry 51 – that’s where we had just come from. We quickly told her that we had already seen the judge she was referring to, explaining that she had in fact recommended that we come here, apparently oblivious that she was this registry’s marriage juez of choice.

Flummoxed, the registry official decided to make the call anyway and a minute later had confirmed what we had told her: knee operation, rehab, Saturday wedding, not on your life.

“I have another idea,” the official told us. “I know a judge in Polanco Would you like me to call him?”

She explained that conducting a marriage service in a borough which is not the one where the juez is based comes with a hefty price tag but after four hours, three different registry visits, too many taxi rides and one growing headache each, we responded, “Sure, make the call.”

“He can’t do it,” she said as she came back into her office a few minutes later. “He’s busy that weekend, and the one before.”

Australian expat Peter Davies is a senior writer at Mexico News Daily and lives in Mexico City. Stay tuned for the sequel.

Army seizes The Monster, gang’s narco-tank in Michoacán

MND Staff

February 1, 2020

Repurposed dump truck served as gang's armored vehicle.

The army on Friday seized an armored “narco-tank” in Michoacán that allegedly belonged to the Viagras crime gang.

Nicknamed “El Monstruo” (The Monster), the repurposed dump truck was located in Aguililla, one of several Tierra Caliente municipalities where the Viagras operate.

The newspaper El Financiero reported that soldiers spotted the vehicle in the community of El Aguaje, site of an ambush last October that left 13 state police officers dead. The attack was allegedly perpetrated by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which is engaged in a bloody turf war with the Viagras.

After they sighted the vehicle, the soldiers pursued it before it came to a halt and its occupants fled, allowing the army to seize it without any resistance. A search operation was launched but no arrests were made.

The so-called “narco-tank” was taken to the neighboring municipality of Apatzingán.

El Financiero said the last time the vehicle was seen in combat was in August last year when it was used to help the vigilante and suspected gang member Juan José Farías stop the CJNG from entering the municipality of Tepalcatepec.

Its seizure came the same day as suspected Viagras leader Luis Felipe Barragán Ayala and two other alleged gang members were arrested in Uruapan after a shootout with security forces.

A very similar vehicle that belonged to the leader of the Los Rojos crime gang was found by community police in Guerrero last August. That “narco-tank” was also dubbed “El Monstruo.”

Source: El Financiero (sp)

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