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MEXICO CITY — In a video posted on social media, a person claiming to be a Mexican drug cartel chief says an assault that killed 20 folks together with a mayor was in truth aimed toward him.
Authorities mentioned Friday they had been investigating the authenticity of the video attributed to José Alfredo Hurtado, a frontrunner of the Familia Michoacana cartel.
Higher recognized by his nickname “The Strawberry” — a slang time period utilized in Mexico to indicate somebody with high-end tastes — the person within the video wears a Gucci T-shirt and an expensive-looking wristwatch as he talks about narrowly escaping the assault Wednesday.
“The assault was aimed toward me,” Hurtado mentioned describing the occasions Wednesday, during which gunmen entered the city of San Miguel Totolapan and opened fireplace on a gathering the mayor was holding with different officers.
Hurtado mentioned he had deliberate to attend that assembly with deceased Mayor Conrado Mendoza and his father, a former mayor, however that the gunmen opened fireplace earlier than he had descended from his bulletproof automobile, permitting him to narrowly escape.
Hurtado mentions that he had cooperated prior to now with the deceased mayor in preventing the Tequileros gang, which claimed accountability for the killings, noting “We began this wrestle collectively, the mayor and us.”
“We had arrange this assembly with the mayor and his father, and the peace group they’ve,” he mentioned, referring to a vigilante group that had been lively in Totolapan, in southern Guerrero state.
In Mexico, residents of cities below strain from from one cartel usually arrange vigilante teams and switch to rival cartels for assist in preventing off the oppressors; cartels make a lot of their cash in Mexico from extorting safety funds from native farmers and businessmen.
Shockingly, for a person needed by police, Hurtado mentioned he has brazenly lived in San Miguel Totolapan for a while.
“My home is in San Miguel, a block from the city corridor, I feel everyone is aware of it,” mentioned Hurtado.
Totolapan is geographically massive however sparsely populated mountainous township in a area often called Tierra Caliente, one in all Mexico’s most conflict-ridden areas.
In one other video posted on social media Wednesday, armed males who recognized themselves because the Tequileros gang claiming accountability for the mass capturing.
On Thursday, Ricardo Mejia, Mexico’s assistant secretary of public security, mentioned the Tequileros are preventing the Familia Michoacana gang within the area.
“This act occurred within the context of a dispute between legal gangs,” Mejia mentioned. “A gaggle often called the Tequileros dominated the area for a while; it was a gaggle that primarily smuggled and distributed opium, but in addition engaged in kidnapping, extortion and several other killings within the area.”
The Familia Michoacana cartel, regardless of its title, was truly kicked out of the neighboring state of Michoacan years in the past by a vigilante motion. Run by Hurtado and his brother, the cartel has been blamed for kidnappings, extortions and bloody assaults on police and troopers.
Totolapan was managed for years by drug gang boss Raybel Jacobo de Almonte, recognized by his nickname as “El Tequilero” (“The Tequila Drinker”).
In his solely recognized public look, de Almonte was captured on video consuming with the elder Mendoza, who was then the city’s mayor-elect, in 2015. It was not clear if the elder Mendoza was there of his personal free will, or had been compelled to attend the assembly.
In that video, de Almonte appeared so drunk he mumbled inaudibly and needed to be held up in a sitting place by one in all his henchmen.
In 2016, Totolapan locals bought so fed up with abductions by the Tequileros that they kidnapped the gang chief’s mom to leverage the discharge of others.
Whereas the Tequileros lengthy relied on trafficking opium paste from native poppy growers, the rising use of the artificial opioid fentanyl had decreased the demand for opium paste and lowered the extent of violence in Guerrero.
