Mexico drug lord captures change but don't lower trafficking
"La Tuta", 49, was arrested early Friday as he left a house in Morelia, the capital of Michoacán, along with eight bodyguards and associates toting a grenade launcher, three grenades, an Uzi machine pistol and assault rifles. (Photo: AP )
It's another big score for the Mexican government,
which has been tearing through its list of most-wanted drug lords in recent
years.
Still, no one
expects drug trafficking or violence to decrease after the capture of Servando
"La Tuta" Gómez, a former grade-school teacher whose Knights Templar
cartel once terrorized the western state of Michoacán.
Crime will only
shift around as the now weakened cartel regroups, or even splinters, as has
happened with some of Mexico's drug gangs after the killings or capture of top
leaders. Others continue business as usual after top leadership hits.
"Dismantling
them was a necessary step, but that does not end the problem of
insecurity," Alejandro Hope, a Mexico City-based security analyst, said of
the Knights Templar. "The next part is more complicated. There are still
small groups, remnants, which will be extorting, robbing and perhaps even
producing methamphetamine."
Gómez, 49, was
arrested early Friday as he left a house in Morelia, the capital of Michoacan,
along with eight bodyguards and associates toting a grenade launcher, three
grenades, an Uzi machine pistol and assault rifles, National Security
Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said.
They were taken
without a shot fired after a months-long intelligence stakeout, in which
Gómez's associates were identified when they gathered for his birthday Feb. 6
with cakes, soft drinks and food.
Rubido said the
key break came months ago when agents identified one of Gómez's most-trusted
messengers, a group of people who apparently supplied him with food, clothing
and medicine when he earlier hid out in the remote mountains of his home state.
Gómez's quasi-religious
criminal band once exercised what Interior Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong
called "absolute control" over Michoacán. It orchestrated politics,
controlled commerce, dictated rules and preached a code of ethics around
devotion to God and family, even as it murdered and plundered. But the cartel
lost power when the federal government took over the state to try to restore
order in January 2014 after vigilantes began fighting the gang.
Other Knights
Templar leaders were captured or killed over the past year as authorities kept
up the hunt for Gómez, who had a US$2 million reward on his head.
Peña Nieto's
government, which took office a little over two years ago, has been aggressive
in capturing drug lords, including the biggest capo, Joaquín "El
Chapo" Guzmán of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, a year ago.
In all, 10 top
leaders of various cartels have been captured or killed in the last six years,
six of them under Peña Nieto. Of Mexico's top criminal leaders, only Ismael
"El Mayo" Zambada of the Sinaloa Cartel remains at large.
"We are
advancing, we are responding, we are having major apprehensions of the most
wanted, most dangerous criminals," Peña Nieto said Friday, congratulating
and thanking the federal forces that helped apprehend Gomez. "Overall, we
continue to work toward a Mexico of peace that we all want."
But the arrests,
even those hitting the powerful and international Sinaloa Cartel, seem to have
had little effect on the flow of drugs. Seizures at the U.S.-Mexico border have
fluctuated since 2010, when 2.7 million pounds were seized, to a high of 3.1
million in 2011 and down to 2.3 million pounds in 2014, according to U.S.
government figures, the only way to estimate flows of drugs.
The federal
government said it already had dismantled the Knights Templar and the arrest of
Gómez was the symbolic icing on the cake.
There are only
two or three key arrests left, Michoacán state prosecutor Jose Martín Godoy
said.
"There are
no organized groups in Michoacán, just individual criminals," Godoy told
The Associated Press, adding that authorities had arrested 6,000 people in the
state last year, including 352 politicians or public servants like the former
interim governor, Jesús Reyna.
But experts doubt
the results over the long term.
"It's a
dangerous proposition to suggest Knights Templar is dismantled," said
David Shirk, associate political science professor at the University of San
Diego. "It may take six months or a year, but this is a group of illegal
actors that has staying power. Their roots go back to `80s and `90s. They just
had different stages. The names change and the leaders change, but the problems
in many ways persist."
Indeed, the
Knights Templar grew out of the La Familia cartel, where Gómez started out
transporting marijuana before becoming a top leader about a decade ago. The
cartel initially portrayed itself as a crusader gang, protecting communities
from the Zetas cartel. Witnesses said La Familia trained its recruits in
ultra-violent techniques like beheading and dismembering victims, and it
frequently ambushed soldiers and federal police.
The government
hit La Familia hard, starting in the administration of President Felipe
Calderón in late 2006. Officials declared the cartel beaten in 2010 after
allegedly killing its leader, Nazario Moreno. But La Familia fled to the
neighboring states of Guerrero and Mexico, where it now fights other regional
gangs for control of the lucrative and growing heroin trade.
Moreno, who
actually hadn't died, then started Knights Templar with Gómez and took an even
stronger hold on Michoacán. After Moreno was finally killed last year and Gómez
going on the run, the Knights Templar too is now operating in Guerrero, at
least in the city of Ciudad Altamirano, extorting protection payments from
small business owners.
The brother of
one pharmacy manager, who insisted on not being quoted by name out fear of
reprisals, said all the stores in town were paying annual "quotas"
ranging from 5,000 pesos (US$335) to 30,000 pesos (US$2,000) for the right to
operate. They were threatened with violence, kidnapping or the burning of their
stores if they didn't pay.
"I have the
impression that this is another detention of no judicial consequence,"
Edgardo Buscaglia, a cartel expert and senior scholar at Columbia University,
said of Gómez's arrest. "It's only meant to reorder the map to reach a
Mafioso kind of peace outside the justice system to improve the image of the
administration of Enrique Peña Nieto."
Recent captures or killings of top Mexican drug cartel
leaders:
- Feb. 27, 2015:
Federal police capture Servando "La Tuta" Gómez, one of world's
most-wanted drug lords who once terrorized Michoacán state as leader of Knights
Templar cartel.
- Oct. 9, 2014:
Officials announce arrest of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, purported leader of
Juárez cartel.
- Oct. 1, 2014: Mexico
announces capture of Héctor Beltrán Leyva, alias "The H" and
"The Engineer," who allegedly became head of Beltrán Leyva cartel
after his brother Arturo died in 2009 gunbattle with troops.
- March 9, 2014:
Soldiers kill Nazario Moreno González, leader of "La Familia Michoacana" and
later Knights Templar, while riding mule in remote Michoacán mountains. Government
had wrongly claimed that he was killed in December 2010.
- Feb. 22, 2014:
Authorities say Mexican and U.S. officials capture world's most powerful drug
lord, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán of Sinaloa Cartel, in beach resort of
Mazatlán.
-July 15, 2013:
Officials in northern Mexico capture Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, alias
"Z-40," leader of Zetas cartel.
-Oct. 7, 2012:
Marines kill Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, founder and top leader of Zetas. His
body later stolen from funeral home.
-Oct. 6, 2012:
Troops arrest alleged Zetas regional leader Salvador Alfonso Martínez Escobedo,
suspected of involvement in massacres and killing of U.S. citizen David Hartley
in 2010 on Falcon Lake straddling U.S.-Mexico border.
-Sept. 12, 2012:
Marines capture purported top Gulf Cartel leader Jorge Eduardo Costilla
Sánchez, alias "El Coss."
-July 29, 2010:
Soldiers raid house in town of Zapopan and kill Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel,
a top leader of Sinaloa Cartel.
-Dec. 16, 2009:
Marines kill Arturo Beltrán Leyva, leader of Beltrán Leyva cartel, in shootout
in Cuernavaca.