Mexican federal police Nov. 1 announced the arrest of the leader of the Gulf Cartel for the border city of Reynosa, across from McAllen, TX. The police statement said Antonio Galarza AKA “El Amarillo” was apprehended in a car stop in the northern city of Monterrey, and charged with weapons violations and money laundering.
Also Nov. 1, unidentified persons strung a series of “narco-messages” on banners fashioned from sheets along roadsides in the Pacific coast resorts of Acapulco and Zihuatanejo in Guerrero state. The messages were apparently written by the Zetas, paramilitary arm of the Gulf Cartel, and accused federal police of protecting rival cartels. They specifically named Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna as collaborating with the Sinaloa Cartel. One banner was placed at La Garita crossroads, also known as the “Zero Zone,” locally famous as the site of a bloody shoot-out three ago between Zetas and Sinaloa Cartel gunmen.
Alberto Bazbaz, prosecutor general of Mexico state, meanwhile announced that 11 state police officers had been killed in the past three days, executions he blamed on “The Family” crime machine of neighboring Michoacán state. Bazbaz said ten had been arrested in connection with the killings. (Canada Press, Milenio, Diaro de Yucatán from AP, Nov. 1)
The press as well as law enforcement are coming under increasing attack by the cartels. On the morning of Oct. 10, the body of Miguel Ángel Villagómez Valle, owner and director La Noticia de Michoacán newspaper, based in the city of Lázaro Cárdenas, who had been kidnapped the previous night, was found in La Unión, Guerrero. (Notimex, Oct. 10)
See our last posts on Mexico’s narco war and attacks on the press.
Mexico: more grisly narco-terror
Kidnappers grabbed a 5-year-old boy from a Mexico City street market, then killed him by injecting acid into his heart—in a new low even for Mexico’s brutal criminal gangs. Javier Morena, was the oldest son of a poor family that sold fruit at a market in the capital’s Iztapalapa district. He disappeared while playing at the market Oct. 26.
The boy’s family spent days searching for him, finally persuading local television to post his picture on the news Oct. 29. Alerted by a tip from a taxi driver who had given the boy and a captor a ride outside the city, police raided the home of a 17-year-old boy, where he and his family and two others confessed to having killed the boy before they could ask for a $23,000 ransom, authorities said. Mexico City Prosecutor General Miguel Mancera said the assailants injected the boy with acid and buried him outside the capital.
Sonora police commander killed
Meanwhile, authorities in Sonora reported the assassination of Juan Manuel Pavon Felix, the state’s second-ranking police official in a hotel blast at the border city of Nogales. In Guanajuato state, four police officers were killed Nov. 3 in two attacks, according to Mexican news reports. And a twelfth state police officer in five days was killed in Mexico state. (Seattle Times, Nov 4 from AP, LAT)