Mexico's Drug War - Page 63

The wife of notorious Mexican drug kingpin "El Chapo" is expected to plead guilty this week to charges stemming from her alleged assistance in helping him run his multi-billion dollar empire, a person familiar with the matter confirmed to CBS News Investigative Unit senior producer Pat Milton.

Her anticipated plea was first reported by The New York Times, which also cites a person familiar with the matter. It was also confirmed by Agence France-Presse.

The Times says she'll also plead guilty to helping him escape from a high-security Mexican prison after one of his arrests.

The newspaper says Emma Coronel Aispuro, 31, is expected to enter her plea on Thursday in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C.

Aispuro was arrested by U.S. authorities at Dulles International Airport outside Washington in February on suspicion of aiding her husband's drug trafficking business.

The former beauty queen was slapped with one charge of conspiracy to traffic cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana for importation into the United States.

A guilty plea could help reduce her sentence.

Joaquin Guzman was the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico's most notorious drug trafficking groups.

He ran an operation that delivered hundreds of tons of narcotics into the United States and was behind multiple murders of those who crossed him, according to court filings.

He was extradited to the United States in 2017 to stand trial and convicted and sentenced to life in prison two years later.

Coronel, according to the Justice Department, took part in cartel activities and also allegedly assisted in two plots to help Guzman escape from Mexican prison, including the successful first one in 2015.

Guzman is now in the highest-security prison in the United States, the ADX federal prison in Florence, Colorado.

A dual US-Mexico citizen and the mother of twins by Guzman, Coronel, 32 years younger than her husband, appeared in court nearly every day of his three-month trial in New York.

She had been barred from all contact with him during more than two years of pre-trial detention.

But during the trial, each day as he entered and left the courtroom, Guzman touched his heart and blew her a kiss.

During the trial, there were suggestions that she was involved in his business and prison escape, but authorities let her come and go freely.

Fear has invaded the Mexican border city of Reynosa after gunmen in vehicles killed 14 people, including taxi drivers, workers and a nursing student, and security forces responded with operations that left four suspects dead.

While this city across the border from McAllen, Texas is used to cartel violence as a key trafficking point, the 14 victims in Saturday's attacks appeared to be what Tamaulipas Gov. Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca called “innocent citizens” rather than members of one gang killed by a rival.

Local businessman Misael Chavarria Garza said many businesses closed early Saturday after the attacks and people were very scared as helicopters flew overhead. On Sunday, he said "the people were quiet as if nothing had happened, but with a feeling of anger because now crime has happened to innocent people.”

“It’s not fair,” said taxi driver Rene Guevara, adding that among the dead were two of his fellow taxi drivers whom he defended and said were not involved in crime.

The attacks took place in several neighborhoods in eastern Reynosa, according to the Tamaulipas state agency that coordinates security forces, and sparked a deployment of the military, National Guard and state police across the city.

Authorities say they are investigating the attacks and haven't provided a motive.

But the area’s criminal activity has long been dominated by the Gulf Cartel and there have been fractures within that group. Experts say there has been an internal struggle within the group since 2017 to control key territories for drug and human trafficking. Apparently, one cell from a nearby town may have entered Reynosa to carry out the attacks.

Olga Ruiz, whose 19-year-old brother Fernando Ruiz was killed by the gunmen, said her sibling was working as a plumber and bricklayer in a company owned by his stepfather to pay for his studies.

“They killed him in cold blood, he and two of his companions,” said Olga Ruiz, adding that the gunmen arrived where her brother was fixing a drain.

“They heard the gunshots from afar and my stepfather told him: ‘son, you have to take shelter.’ So he asked permission to enter a house but my brother and his companions were only about to enter when the vehicles arrived,” Ruiz said. “They stopped in front of them and started to shoot.”

On Saturday, authorities detained a person who was transporting two apparently kidnapped women in the trunk of a car.

Security is one of the great challenges facing the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

He has assured Mexicans that he is fighting the root causes of the violence and since the beginning of his administration in December 2018, he has advocated “hugs, not bullets” in dealing with criminals. He also says he is fighting corruption to stop the infiltration of organized crime among authorities.

But the violence continues.

“Criminal organizations must receive a clear, explicit and forceful signal from the Federal Government that there will be no room for impunity, nor tolerance for their reprehensible criminal behavior,” said García Cabeza de Vaca of the rival National Action Party. “In my government there will be no truce for the violent.”

But García Cabeza de Vaca himself is being investigated by the federal prosecutor’s office for organized crime and money laundering - accusations he says are part of plan by López Obrador's government to attack him for being an opponent.

Tamaulipas — the state where the Zetas cartel arose and where the Gulf Cartel continues to operate — has seen several of its past governors from the Institutional Revolutionary Party accused of corruption and links to organized crime. One former governor, Tomás Yarrington, was extradited to the United States from Italy in 2018 on drug trafficking charges.“They heard the gunshots from afar and my stepfather told him: ‘son, you have to take shelter.’ So he asked permission to enter a house but my brother and his companions were only about to enter when the vehicles arrived,” Ruiz said. “They stopped in front of them and started to shoot.”

On Saturday, authorities detained a person who was transporting two apparently kidnapped women in the trunk of a car.

Security is one of the great challenges facing the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

He has assured Mexicans that he is fighting the root causes of the violence and since the beginning of his administration in December 2018, he has advocated “hugs, not bullets” in dealing with criminals. He also says he is fighting corruption to stop the infiltration of organized crime among authorities.

But the violence continues.

“Criminal organizations must receive a clear, explicit and forceful signal from the Federal Government that there will be no room for impunity, nor tolerance for their reprehensible criminal behavior,” said García Cabeza de Vaca of the rival National Action Party. “In my government there will be no truce for the violent.”

But García Cabeza de Vaca himself is being investigated by the federal prosecutor’s office for organized crime and money laundering - accusations he says are part of plan by López Obrador's government to attack him for being an opponent.

Tamaulipas — the state where the Zetas cartel arose and where the Gulf Cartel continues to operate — has seen several of its past governors from the Institutional Revolutionary Party accused of corruption and links to organized crime. One former governor, Tomás Yarrington, was extradited to the United States from Italy in 2018 on drug trafficking charges.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Authorities in northern Mexico said Wednesday they found the bodies of two abducted police officers hanging from an overpass, and the bodies of seven people shot to death in a neighboring city.

The public safety department in Zacatecas state said the policemen’s bodies were found Wednesday morning in the state capital, also known as Zacatecas. They were members of the police force of the neighboring state of San Luis Potosi who had been reported missing hours earlier.

Drug cartels have hung the bodies of victims from overpasses before as a message to rivals or authorities, but seldom do so with members of law enforcement.

In the nearby city of Fresnillo, police later found the bullet-ridden bodies of four women and three men. One man and a woman were found wounded at the scene of the attack, along with five children who had not been wounded.

Zacatecas, once dominated by the old Zetas cartel, has been the scene of turf battles between a number of cartels.

The killings in Zacatecas came one day after prosecutors in Mexico’s most violent state, Guanajuato, reported seven men were shot to death at a mechanic’s shop. The state prosecutors’ office said the shop specialized in repairing motorcycles.

Guanajuato has Mexico’s highest number of homicides, and has been the scene of turf battles between the Jalisco drug cartel and local gangs backed by the Sinaloa cartel.

There was no immediate information on a possible motive in the shootings, but such attacks in Guanajuato in the past have been related to rivalries between drug gangs or street-level drug dealing.

The battle for control of Guanajuato, and industrial and farming hub, have continued despite increased efforts by police and the National Guard to contain the fighting.

In recent months, the Jalisco cartel kidnapped several members of an elite state police force, tortured them to obtain names and addresses of fellow officers and began hunting down and killing police at their homes, on their days off, in front of their families.

The bullet-ridden bodies of 18 people were discovered after what appeared to have been a shootout between members of rival drug cartels in northern Mexico.

The bodies were found in a remote, rural area of the north-central state of Zacatecas, state security department spokeswoman Rocío Aguilar said on Friday.

There was evidence the deaths in the township of Valparaiso resulted from a confrontation between gunmen from the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels, she said.

Zacatecas, once dominated by the old Zetas cartel, is being fought over by a dizzying number of cartels. Those jockeying for turf in Zacatecas include the Sinaloa, Jalisco, Gulf and Northeast cartels as well as remnants of the Zetas who call themselves “Talibans”.

The gunbattle came two days after the bodies of two abducted police officers were found hanging from an overpass in the Zacatecas state capital and seven people were discovered shot to death in a neighbouring city.

The policemen were officers from the neighboring state of San Luis Potosi who had been reported missing earlier.

Drug cartels have hung the bodies of victims from overpasses before as a message to rivals or to authorities, but seldom do so with members of law enforcement.

In the nearby city of Fresnillo, police later found the bullet-ridden bodies of four women and three men. One man and a woman were found wounded at the scene of the attack, along with five children who had not been harmed.

The deaths in Zacatecas also follow a flare-up in violence on the US-Mexico border where 19 people were killed last weekend.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A San Jose, California woman born in India was one of two foreign tourists killed in the apparent crossfire of a drug-gang shootout in Mexico’s Caribbean coast resort of Tulum.

Authorities in Quintana Roo, the state where Tulum, Playa del Carmen and Cancun are located, said one of the dead women was Anjali Ryot.

An Instagram account under the same name showed a post of Ryot lounging and smiling on a seaside pier in Tulum two days ago. It listed her as a travel blogger from Himachal, India, living in California. A linked Facebook page said she lived in San Jose.

A German woman who was killed has been identified as Jennifer Henzold, though no hometown was immediately available for her.

Three other foreign tourists were wounded in the shooting late Wednesday at a street-side eatery that has some outdoor tables, right off Tulum’s main strip. They included two German men and a Dutch woman.

The German Foreign Office issued a travel advisory about the violence, advising its citizens “if you are currently in the Tulum or Playa del Carmen area, do not leave your secured hotel facilities.”

The gunfight apparently broke out between two groups that operate street-level drug sales in the area, according to prosecutors. The tourists were apparently dining at the restaurant and may have been caught in the crossfire.

The shooting occurred on Tulum’s ‘Mini-Quinta,’ a reference to Playa del Carmen’s larger, flashier bar and restaurant zone known as Quinta Avenida, or Fifth Avenue.

On Friday, the civic group Citizens Observatorio of Tulum posted photos of hand-lettered signs that appeared at a local market in Tulum, signed by a drug gang known as Los Pelones, roughly “the Shaved Heads.”

The sign said the shooting “was a warning, so you can see we mean business,” adding “you either get in line or we are going to continue shutting places down like the Mini Quinta,” an apparent warning to pay extortion demands for protection money.

“We are in control here,” the sign added. The gang, part of the Gulf Cartel, has long extorted protection money from bars and night clubs in Cancun, but has now apparently extended operations further south to Playa del Carmen and Tulum. The gang is also fighting the Jalisco Cartel and other groups for the area’s lucrative drug market.

The killings threatened Tulum’s reputation as a low-key carefree beach town without the crowding and problems of Cancun.

After the shooting, U.S. tourist James Graham said he had come to Tulum with the idea of possibly buying a property there to rent out on AirBnB. “Right now, we are not so sure we’re going to buy anything here,” Graham said.

“I think that what was surprising, is we figured that this type of crime wouldn’t necessarily be where the main tourist areas are, just because it’s such a big part of the economy,” Graham said. “You would think that you would be very careful to make sure that you know the tourists feel very safe coming here.”

But there have been signs the situation was out of control months ago. In June, two men were shot to death on the beach in Tulum and a third was wounded.

And in nearby Playa del Carmen, police stage a massive raid Thursday on the beach town’s restaurant-lined Quinta Avenida, detaining 26 suspects — most apparently for drug sales — after a city policewoman was shot to death and locked in the trunk of a car last week. Prosecutors said Friday they have arrested a suspect in that killing.

Crime “has gone up a little with extortion, with drug sales to foreigners and Mexicans,” the prosecutors office said in a statement about the raid.

The administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has pinned its hopes on Tulum, where it has announced plans to build an international airport and a stop for the Maya train, which will run in a loop around the Yucatan peninsula.

MEXICO CITY — In the latest sign of Mexico’s staggering levels of violence, the bodies of 10 men were found hanging from a bridge on a federal highway in northwest Zacatecas state. The bodies were a sign of the brutal battles between rival drug gangs that have bloodied the state.

The men apparently were kidnapped from the rural town of San Pedro Piedra Gorda, about 20 miles from the capital city of Zacatecas, according to news reports. They were tortured and hung from a bridge, and then their assailants opened fire on the bodies, according to the reports.

One of the bodies fell to the ground before authorities arrived at the scene.

Stunned residents of San Pedro Piedra Gorda traveled to the bridge to try to identify their relatives. “They say that my brother-in-law is there, but we want to see if my father-in-law is, too,” one man told a police officer, according to the Jornada newspaper. Three women nearby hugged and wept, it said.

In a statement, the Zacatecas public safety agency said that an “intensive operation” was underway to find those responsible for the killings. It said that authorities would release more information as it became available.

Drug groups quietly cultivated marijuana in Zacatecas for decades. But in the past few years, the state has become a battleground, with rival narcotics groups shooting or beheading their enemies.

In July, two men were discovered crucified in the Zacatecas town of Morelos, in what was seen as an attack by organized crime. Earlier this week, the bodies of three policemen — including a local police director in Loreto city in Zacatecas — were found just days after they were kidnapped by armed men, local media reported.

On Friday, the public safety agency Secretaría de Seguridad Pública Zacatecas said that it was investigating reports of two trash bags containing human remains in the city of Fresnillo.

The Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels, as well as smaller groups, are fighting to control the crucial highways in Zacatecas used to send drugs to the U.S. border.

Analysts say drug groups use the grisly tactic of hanging bodies from bridges to intimidate their enemies. The tactic first appeared more than a decade ago. It had declined in the past few years, but there are new signs of gruesome public violence in some areas, such as Zacatecas.

Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera became infamous for daring jailbreaks in Mexico only to end up serving life in prison in the United States. Now his wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, has managed to avoid a similar fate.

The 32-year-old Coronel was sentenced Tuesday to just three years in prison after pleading guilty earlier this year to charges that she helped her husband run his drug trafficking empire, facilitated one of his prison escapes in Mexico, and violated U.S. sanctions by spending his illicit fortune. She also paid nearly $1.5 million to the U.S. government.

It could have ended much worse for Coronel, who faced up to 14 years for her crimes under federal sentencing guidelines. Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., asked her judge for leniency, calling for her to serve just four years behind bars and fueling speculation that she struck a deal to cooperate.

Coronel’s attorneys and federal prosecutors made the case to sentencing Judge Rudolph Contreras that she only played a minimal role in the cartel and that her crimes were committed simply because she was married to El Chapo.

“The defendant was not an organizer, leader, boss, or other type of manager,” prosecutor Anthony Nardozzi said. “Rather she was a cog in a very large wheel of a criminal organization.”

A soft-spoken Coronel addressed the court in Spanish before the judge handed down the sentence, asking for forgiveness and making a plea for leniency so that she could be free to raise her 10-year-old twin daughters, who were fathered by El Chapo.

“I know that you may find it difficult to ignore the fact that I am the wife of Mr. Guzmán Loera, and perhaps for this reason you feel there’s a need for you to be harder on me, but I pray that you not do that,” Coronel said. “I am suffering as a result of the pain that I've caused my family.

“My family brought me up to know what respect was and gratitude and honesty but they also taught me to accept those mistakes that I made,” she said. “And for that reason I am here before you asking for forgiveness.”

Coronel then invoked her twin daughters, saying, “Those are precisely the same values that I wish to teach my daughters. They are the primary most important reasons why I’m here before you.”

She added: “They were already growing up without the presence of one of their parents and for this reason I beg you to not let them grow up without the presence of their mother.”

The light sentence has raised eyebrows among ex-prosecutors who handled similar cases against high-level drug traffickers and their associates. “Downward departure,” or a sentence below the range called for by federal guidelines, is typically reserved for individuals who agree to assist the government in some capacity, David Weinstein, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in Miami told VICE News.

Extraordinary video footage has emerged reportedly showing a bomblet-dropping drone being used by one of Mexico’s increasingly well-armed drug cartels to attack one of its enemies. While we have reported previously about these groups using small quadcopter-type ‘suicide drones,’ each carrying a single explosive device, this is our best look at a drone acting as a bomber of sorts for cartel purposes.

The video is filmed from the drone’s own camera. With the drone hovering over an enemy camp, several small munitions are seen being dropped through the trees, while multiple people targeted below run for their own protection.

At least three separate explosions appear to set part of the camp ablaze before the second part of the video also records the crash of the drone, as it rapidly loses control and spirals to the ground.

A report from the Quadratín Michoacán news channel yesterday includes the same video and notes that alleged members of the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), or Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which is primarily based in Jalisco state, western Mexico, bombed “at least two towns in Tepalcatepec with drones.” The municipality of Tepalcatepec is in the southwestern state of Michoacán, which borders Jalisco to the north and west. The two towns that were attacked are identified as El Bejuco and La Romera.

The same news channel says that the video first appeared on social networks and that the attacks have also been corroborated by local residents, although the status of any casualties and the extent of the damage is unknown.

Quadratín Michoacán reports that the drones were “immediately shot down,” although it’s clear that at least one managed to deliver a number of munitions, and it can’t be confirmed if the drone we see crashing in the video was indeed brought down by groundfire or some other counter-drone device or even a malfunction.

The drone strikes appear to be connected to the ongoing efforts of the drug lord and leader of the CJNG, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho, to take control of Tepalcatepec from the rival United Cartels. On Monday, alleged CJNG gunmen raided El Bejuco and La Romera, the two towns later reportedly hit by drone strikes.

Perhaps not coincidentally, it was in Tepalcatepec that a previous cache of explosive-laden quadcopters — two dozen in all — thought to belong to the CJNG was discovered by a civilian self-defense militia in July 2020. These drones were reportedly found in a car that had been abandoned by cartel hitmen.

In the July 2020 incident, the bombs attached to the drones consisted of plastic containers filled with C4 charges and ball bearings to act as shrapnel. The munitions dropped by the drone in the latest video appear more sophisticated, cylindrical in shape, and apparently fitted with some kind of tailfins to improve their accuracy. Notably, the latest drone type is able to deliver multiple munitions, allowing different targets to be attacked during the same flight, while the earlier types identified so far contained only one explosive charge and were designed to fly one-way missions.

This same general improvized bomblet-dropping drone capability first appeared during the Battle of Mosul in Iraq back in 2017 and has since become far more widespread in war-torn locales. At the time, we pointed out how the capability would be a game-changer and how it would proliferate quickly to other conflicts and criminal organizations. You can check out that report here.

Prior to that, quadcopters with explosives thought to belong to the CJNG were recovered in the city of Puebla, in the state of the same name, southeast of Mexico City, and subsequently elsewhere, in May 2020. The history of armed drones in the hands of the cartels goes back even further, to at least 2017.

Based on this limited evidence, it seems that CJNG’s ability to employ weaponized drones is very much still intact and its capabilities have even been improved through this latest, more sophisticated design.

We have discussed the background to the CJNG before, but since its emergence in 2009, it’s become responsible for the movement of approximately one-third of all drugs from Mexico into the United States and has also sought to establish footholds in Europe and Asia.

As well as drones, the CJNG can call upon a wide variety of weapons, vehicles, and equipment. These include camouflaged trucks, pickups, and SUVs, some of them armed with mounted weapons and equipped with add-on armor. Its personnel are also heavily armed and provided with military-style tactical gear.

Intriguingly, there are also reports that the CJNG previously made use of small, manned aircraft to drop improvised explosive devices on members of the Tepalcatepec self-defense militia. This tactic was apparently dropped after the Mexican government expanded its air surveillance in the region. The Mexican military is notably well equipped in this regard, with a variety of surveillance aircraft ranging from airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) platforms to adapted executive aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles outfitted with signals intelligence (SIGINT) equipment and other sensors. However, the detection of small drones like those so far used in the CJNG attacks is a much tougher proposition.

Using a drone to deliver munitions is not a huge leap for the CJNG, or other cartels, which already make extensive use of unmanned systems to both transport drugs and carry out surveillance.

And, as we have seen in plentiful other examples, creating small bomb-carrying drones, especially those based on an off-the-shelf quadcopter or hexacopter design, is not necessarily a significant challenge.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has described a mobile counter-drone capability as an “emerging requirement,” and such is the proliferation of the threat that the U.S. military is now working hard to field effective countermeasures to small, bomb-carrying drones. These technologies include jammers, as well as directed-energy weapons, involving both lasers and high-power microwave beams.

The use of small munitions-carrying drones by a cartel, albeit a notably well-equipped one, provides further evidence, as if it were needed, of the threat posed by these kinds of weapons. In the future, we are only likely to see more such drones in the hands of both non-state actors and regular military units.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — In the war raging between drug cartels in western Mexico, gangs have begun using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on roads to disable army vehicles.

The self-defense movement in the town of Tepalcatepec, in western Michoacan state, said improvised land mines severely damaged an army armored car late last week.

A spokesman for the movement, which is battling the Jalisco cartel, supplied photos showing a disabled army light armored vehicle on a road with damage he said was caused by such a mine.

The spokesman, who refused to reveal his name for fear of reprisals, said the explosion happened last Saturday in the town of Taixtan, near Tepalcatepec, where locals have been battling Jalisco gunmen for months.

The warring gangs already frequently use homemade armored cars and drones modified to drop small bombs. But it would be the first time IEDs have been successfully used by cartels in Mexico.

The Mexican Army did not respond to a request for specific comment on the IEDs. But the Defense Department did say army patrols were attacked in the area Saturday four times with explosives, homemade armored cars and gunfire that wounded 10 soldiers. The department did not specify what type of explosives were involved.

The Milenio television station described the IEDs as PVC pipe bombs buried with a round metal base below and a conical metal cap to direct or concentrate the blast.

Security analyst Juan Ibarrola, who specializes in the military, said “the worrisome thing is the improvisation that they (criminal groups) are doing with engineering, to create weapons, boobytraps, explosives and so on.”

Rather than trying to fight an outright war with the army — which they know they would lose — Ibarrola said that with the IEDs and other devices “more than anything else, what they are trying to do is threaten and take on rival groups.”

It is not clear if the improvised land mines are only being used by one side in the bloody turf battle for control of Michoacan state, which drug traffickers value for its seaport and smuggling routes, as well as the opportunity to extort money from the state’s growers of avocados and limes.

In November, residents of the Jalisco-dominated village of Loma Blanca showed Associated Press journalists a small crater, with a round metal plate, where they said the Tepalcatepec forces had detonated a land mine.

While cartel gunmen across Mexico have used hand grenades and rocket-propelled grenades against police and soldiers before, IEDs have been practically unknown in the country’s drug wars.

In 2010, a car bomb aimed at federal police officers exploded in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, killing three people and wounding nine. A drug cartel suspect used a cell phone to set off the explosives-laden car, which killed a federal police officer and two civilians, and wounded nine people.

In 2015, Jalisco cartel gunmen brought down a Eurocopter transport helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade, killing eight soldiers and a police officer. While the choppers Jalisco faces now are Blackhawks, there is little doubt the cartel can come up with something punchier.

The Mexican government is rapidly running out of tools to control the expansion of the Jalisco cartel, Mexico’s most militarily powerful drug gang. The army has already pulled out some of its most lethal weapons in its fight against the Jalisco cartel: Helicopter gunships equipped with electric mini-guns, rotating barrel machine guns capable of firing thousands of rounds per minute.

But the inhabitants of Michoacan are also fed up with the army’s strategy of simply separating the Jalisco and the Michoacan-based Viagras gang. The army policy effectively allows the Viagras — best known for kidnapping and extorting money — to set up roadblocks and checkpoints on many of the state’s roads. Limes, avocados and cattle heading out, or supplies heading in, must pay a war tax to the Viagras.

The do-nothing strategy appears to be part of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s “hugs, not bullets” policy of avoiding confrontation.

“The difficult thing here is that there hasn’t been any resounding effort by the government to confront” the gangs, said Ibarrola. “That’s serious, not because there isn’t the capacity, the army is there and can do it, but the orders just simply don’t come.”

Meanwhile, the cartels have developed bomb-carrying drones, and the most feared warriors are the “droneros,” or drone operators. While initially crude and dangerous to load and operate — and still worrisomely indiscriminate — drone warfare has improved, and it’s not unusual to see metal barn or shed roofs opened like tin cans from the impact of drone explosions.

MEXICO CITY, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Sixteen people died in Mexico's central state of Zacatecas following an apparent violent dispute between criminal gangs, authorities said on Saturday, as the state grapples with a spike in violence.

State prosecutor Francisco Murillo said 10 bodies were found wrapped in blankets in the streets of the Fresnillo municipality while another six were "suspended" inside a warehouse in the nearby community Panfilo Natera.

Two people who were transporting another corpse a day earlier have been arrested, he added, saying the person could be linked to the other deaths.

Last month, authorities found the bodies of 10 people abandoned inside a vehicle in the historic center of the state capital, also named Zacatecas, a few steps from the government offices.

Homicides rose last year, official figures showed: the state of Zacatecas registered 1,050 in 2021, about 200 more than the previous year.

ACAPULCO, Mexico, March 31 (Reuters) - The severed heads of six men were discovered on Thursday atop a car in a town in southwestern Mexico with a sign warning others they could face the same fate, authorities said, a grisly reminder of the gang violence plaguing the country.

A statement from the attorney general's office of the state of Guerrero said the remains were found on a Volkswagen abandoned on a busy boulevard in the town of Chilapa de Alvarez.

"In Chilapa selling crystal, kidnapping, extortion and stealing are strictly prohibited. This will happen to anyone who messes around," read the accompanying sign strung from two trees, according to a photo of the crime scene provided by the police to Reuters.

"Capital punishment is the sentence for all these crimes," said the sign.

The six victims have not been identified.

Guerrero, one of Mexico's poorest states, was the scene of the infamous abduction and presumed massacre of 43 students training to be teachers in the city of Iguala in 2014.

Widespread violence has wracked Mexico under the administration of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office in late 2018 pledging to pacify the country with a less confrontational approach to dealing with organized crime.

Lopez Obrador inherited a nation already reeling from a high murder rate. Since he took office, average annual homicide totals are on track to be the highest under any Mexican administration since modern records began.

He has faced criticism from his detractors for his security policy, which he termed "Hugs, not bullets."

Catholics are demanding the return of the bodies of two priests who were murdered after attempting to prevent drug traffickers from killing a man inside their church.

"It is with great sadness and pain that we mourn Father Javier Campos Morales, Father Joaquin Mora Salazar, and the man who, unfortunately, lost his life along with them," the Diocese of the Tarahumara region of Western Chihuahua said Tuesday.

The region borders Texas and New Mexico.

The priests were shot dead in the church "with no defense but their faith in God," as they tried to protect a man whose life was in danger, the statement read.

The shooters took all three bodies, which officials are working to locate, according to a report.

Officials learned of the slaughter after receiving an emergency call around 6:00 p.m. on Monday, the report noted.

"The state government laments and condemns these violent actions in which two priests became circumstantial victims," state police said.

The Mexican armed forces, state agencies, and local agencies are working to find those responsible, but no suspects have been identified.

A regional cartel leader is reportedly believed to be connected to the event.

"Amid so much death and crime in our country, we publicly condemn this tragedy and demand a prompt investigation and security for the community and all the priests in the country," the Catholic Diocese of Juarez said in a statement.

On January 14 2022 00:10 JimmiC wrote:
That is frightening. I don't see anyway to end the cartels or help south of the american border other than legalization and regulation. Every time they take one down or out another worse one appears. Having drugs and prostitution not exist is not possible. The same way prohibition of alcohol gave power to capone this is feeding crime corruption and violence throughout the world.