Mexican police, soldiers killed in multi-city attacks by drug gang: Part 2

A federal judge ordered 10 municipal police officers from Arteaga to be arrested Saturday in connection with the slayings of 12 off-duty federal agents in southwestern Mexico. The federal officers' bodies were found Tuesday on a remote highway in Michoacan state, where at least 18 federal agents and two soldiers have been killed since July 11 due to drug-related violence. Video from the scene showed three narcomessages left by the killers. They all stated the same thing: "So that you come for another. We will be waiting for you here."

Later, a caller phoned a news show in Mexico and said he was one of the cartel bosses behind the bloodshed. "Our fight is with the federal police because they are attacking our families," the voice said calmly. "If someone attacks my father, my mother or my brother then they are going to hear from me... If they only act against us, then we will respect them."

This call appears to be the latest attempt to take the moral high ground by a quasi-religious drug cartel that has become one of the most dangerous threats to the Mexican security forces. The caller identified himself as Servando Gomez, head of a narcotics mafia calling itself "La Familia Michoacana." The gangsters, who had bought ads in newspapers and given an interview to a leading Mexican magazine, claim that although they traffic drugs, they protect their local community and purport to be devout Evangelical Christians. All members are disciplined to abstain from narcotics themselves and care for their homes and children, La Familia says.

Resources:

• “New escalation in Mexico drug war”, BBC News, 7/19/09.
• “Drug Dealing for Jesus: Mexico's Evangelical Narcos”, Time, 7/19/09.
• “10 Mexican police officers held in killings of 12 federal agents”, Time, 7/18/09.
• “La Familia: Another Deadly Mexican Syndicate”, Foreign Policy Research Institute, February 2009.
• “Cartels now killing at will in Chihuahua”, El Paso Times, 7/15/09.
• “Drug-Cartel Links Haunt an Election South of Border”, Wall Street Journal, 7/3/09.
• “Mexico drug traffickers corrupt politics”, LA Times, 5/31/09.
• “Mexico's Narco-Insurgency and U.S. Counterdrug Policy”, Strategic Studies Institute, 5/7/09.