Uncovering Mexico
Jeremy Schwartz is the Mexico correspondent for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Mexico City.What's on this page?
The entry titled "Michoacán: The new battleground."
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Home > Uncovering Mexico > Archives > 2006 > December > 12 > Entry
Michoacán: The new battleground
It seems Nuevo Laredo has passed the torch to the central state of Michoacán when it comes to levels of unimaginable drug violence. The state has registered more than 500 drug-related executions and, more spectacularly, 17 beheadings this year.
In a show of strength by his week-old administration, President Felipe Calderon, who was born in Michoacán, is sending in the troops. Almost 7,000 to be exact. Michoacán will take on the appearance of a militarized zone, with 24 checkpoints on the state’s roads, flyovers searching for clandestine marijuana fields and a virtual sealing of ports on the Pacific Coast.
Vicente Fox tried to flood Nuevo Laredo with federal troops in 2005, an effort that did nothing to slow the grinding war between the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels. Those two cartel giants appear to have found another battleground in Michoacán, where proxy groups have been doing most of the fighting.
The most violent of those groups may be a local outfit called La Famila. While the Mexican government has said La Famila is linked to the Matamoros-based Gulf Cartel, the group has presented itself as home-grown vigilantes trying to do good.
Even as it claims responsibility for several grisly decapitations, it has taken out ads in local papers defending its actions, arguing that it is seeking to rid the state of purveyors of ice, a particularly addictive and damaging form of methamphetamine.
The group also has granted interviews to Mexican newspapers, telling El Universal that it is helping poor farmers and funding schools in the poorest regions of Michoacán, which is annually among the states sending the most migrants to the United States.
Comments
By cresencio valdez
December 13, 2006 6:42 PM | Link to this
Whew! This story should be read in every classroom in America…I read it with particular interest…My mother was born on a small ranch in Michoacan….So very very sad.