Hitmen kill 17 in Mexico clinic on U.S. border

About a dozen hooded gunmen burst into a Mexican rehabilitation clinic near the U.S. border on Wednesday, lining up patients before killing 17 of them. Drug gangs have targeted rehab clinics in the manufacturing city of Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas, accusing them of protecting dealers from rival gangs.

The attack was one of the deadliest in President Felipe Calderon's three-year war against drug cartels, despite the presence of 10,000 troops and federal police in Ciudad Juarez who constantly patrol the city's streets.

The suspected hitmen stormed their way into the drug and alcohol rehab clinic in Ciudad Juarez and forced patients into a line in a corridor before shooting them, the army and the El Diario newspaper said.

In a separate attack on Wednesday, gunmen killed the deputy police chief in Calderon's home state of Michoacan in western Mexico. There have been a number of high profile attacks on police and military forces in Michoacan by La Familia cartel.

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La Familia: Mexican Drug Cartel

At a May 30, 2009 news conference, Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora Icaza labeled La Familia Michoacána (or La Familia) Mexico’s most dangerous cartel. He based this assessment on the bloodcurdling cruelty perpetrated by the shadowy, pious organization; its ability to bribe and threaten politicians; its spectacular surge in producing methamphetamines; and its access to high-powered weapons in Michoacán state, in southwestern Mexico, where 10,311 arms were confiscated last year—more than in any other state in the country.

Several factors explain why La Familia has shoved Michoacán to the brink of becoming a no-man’s land. First, the state is home to Lazaro Cardenas, the seaport that, along with nearby Manzanillo, Colima, provides the entry portal for cocaine from Andean nations and precursor chemicals for producing methamphetamines from China, Holland, Bulgaria, and other countries. Second, it forms part of the Tierra Caliente, an avocado, mango, and marijuana growing region where Michoacan, Guerrero, and Mexico State intersect. Finally, it bristles with hidden super-laboratories for manufacturing meth.

Michoacán has attracted not only La Familia, but other potent, deadly crime syndicates: the Beltrán Leyva brothers, who cooperate with Los Zetas, a paramilitary force created by the Gulf Cartel earlier in the decade; and the Guadalajara and Milenio Cartels, elements of which collaborate with the powerful Sinaloan Cartel headed by the legendary Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera. As of July 31, 254 drug-related deaths had occurred in Michoacan—well ahead of the 233 for 2008 and 238 for 2007.

"La Familia Michoacána: A Deadly Mexican Cartel Revisited", Foreign Policy Research Institute, August 2009.

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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.

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Mexican police, soldiers killed in multi-city attacks by drug gang: Part 1

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) -- Coordinated attacks in at least eight Mexican cities killed three federal police officers and two soldiers Saturday in what officials are calling an unprecedented onslaught by drug gangs. Another 18 federal officers were wounded.

The attacks were in retribution for the capture early Saturday of Arnoldo Rueda Medina, a high-ranking member of the drug cartel known as La Familia Michoacana (The Michoacan Family), Notimex reported.

Rueda is considered second in command to the group's two top leaders, Nazario "El Chayo" Moreno González and José " El Chango" de Jesús Méndez Vargas, acting as a "right arm" to Moreno, the secretary of public security said Saturday in a statement.

Among other allegations, he was arrested for his role in designing the hierarchy of the organization, the production of synthetic drugs and movement of marijuana and cocaine to the United States, said Mexico's secretary of public security.

• "Bodies found in Mexican town", Al Jazeera, 7/14/09.
  
• "Mexican police, soldiers killed in multicity attacks by drug gang", CNN, 7/11/09.

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