NY TIMES
by Damian Cave
Gunmen blockaded President Felipe Calderón’s hometown on Thursday, forcing drivers from their cars, trucks and buses, then setting the vehicles ablaze in the middle of major intersections.
Jonathan Arredondo, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office in Michoacán State, where the blockade occurred, said the brazen effort stopped traffic around 11 a.m. at all five entrances to Mr. Calderón’s hometown, the colonial city of Morelia, ending only after the fires died down.
It appeared to be a show of force by La Familia, a drug gang. Several of its leaders have been arrested in recent months, but the criminal outfit — notorious for beheadings, methamphetamine production and brash attacks on government forces — continues to fight for control of the area west of Mexico City that it has dominated for years.
Only a day earlier, in a nearby city in Michoacán, a series of shootouts between federal police officers and suspected La Familia gunmen left three people dead — an 8-month-old, a 16-year-old girl and a federal officer. In a statement, the federal police said that in at least one case on Wednesday, gunmen ambushed officers from both sides of a road, using automatic rifles.
It was unclear whether the blockade was connected to the earlier violence, or was perhaps meant to rebut recent claims by a detained La Familia leader that the cartel was in decline. On Thursday, the police said that no arrests had been made so far, and that the blockade had left one man injured, with a gunshot wound in the leg.
Mr. Arredondo said the injured man was a 75-year-old diabetic. “The criminals were frustrated because he was walking slowly,” Mr. Arredondo said. “So they shot him.”
Morelia has been struck by violence before. In 2008, a grenade attack tore through a crowded Independence Day celebration, killing eight people and wounding more than 100 others.
Windy city Kid,
ReplyDeleteJust the holiday vacation I was looking for!! I fly in a couple days. Now I know what to expect when I drive in from the airport, in case I run into a traffic jam, followed with thick black smoke in the distance...
Sube las manos en alto! No trates de escaparte porque te hacemos pedazos! LFM going down!
ReplyDeleteThe head of LFM is dead and continue to deal with blows....la muerte de Nazario Moreno González, "El Chayo", principal líder de "La Familia Michoacana". Viva la fuerzas federales!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeletees obvio que esta el P.R.I. declaro la guerra al pan a nivel nacional, el P.R.I. quiere volver a gobernar Mexico a como de lugar, que mejor manera que hacer creer al mundo que mexico ya es un estado fallido.
ReplyDeleteBoth PRI and PAN are a together a total disaster for Mexico. These are the two political parties pushed off as the only legitimate ones from D.C. though. Go figure?
ReplyDeleteBut Morelia is a city of 600,000, and Calderon allowing a city this size to be captured by cartelistas like the cities, too, on the border have been at times basically captured and briefly held in this same manner, shows that he is not a competent leader in Mexico at all, and that he should resign immediately and get out of the office he illegitimately acquired through a fraudulent election.
Ernest1