Luvianos: the bloody battle that was covered up

Proceso (2-6-13)

Translated by un vato for Borderland Beat

MEXICO, D.F. (Proceso).-- Last year, on August 23, residents of the Mexico State municipality of Luvianos noticed suspicious activities that were a prelude to a new confrontation between groups of drug traffickers disputing the plaza.

 

"On the main entrance to the town that comes from the turn off from the road to Bejucos, on the exit towards Zacazonapan and in downtown streets, several pickups with tinted windows started to circulate, and, acting as if they were police, would stop cars that they thought looked suspicious to inspect them," says a resident who asked not to be identified.

 

A cab driver also commented that in the ranching community El Estanco, three miles east of the main entrance to Luvianos, a group of unknown individuals arrived in pickups with tinted windows and installed roadblocks on the roads, where they remained for more than two hours: "They were stopping everybody, those who were going to, and those that were coming out of, Luvianos."

 

Because they have lived through prior confrontations, the residents of Luvianos dug in inside their homes and closed their businesses. There was a rumor going around that members of La Familia Michoacana were looking for  gunmen from Los Caballeros Templarios who had managed to infiltrate their territory to try to take over.

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On Friday, the 24th, the number of clandestine roadblocks around Luvianos increased, and with that, the tension. Local authorities did not get involved.

 

The morning of the 25th  (of August) began peacefully, as if the residents of Luvianos and the surrounding area had gotten used to the constant traffic of pickups with tinted windows. After midday, on the road that goes over the river and across the Barranca del Gato, about two miles east of Luvianos, the persons on one of those vehicles opened fire on a car.

 

"They wounded a woman on the arm; she was driving a car that a relative had loaned her and they said that people with La Familia were looking for that relative, that's why the fighting started," says one of the residents, who also asks to remain anonymous.

 

It was on the 26th at dawn that another group, in retaliation for the attack on the woman, went over to Barranca del Gato to attack the people at the roadblock. According to area residents, the first "big shootout" took place between Barranca del Gato and the ranch quarters at Cruz de Piedra, which are located about a half mile from Cerro de la Culebra (Culebra Hill).

"The shots could be heard from a long ways off. Those people use only cuernos de chivo (AK-47s) and AR-15s. They hit each other with everything they had, there were a lot of shots fired -- says one of the witnesses --; the shooting lasted more than 30 minutes, and, of course, there were deaths, everybody around here saw that.

But it's also the practice with those killers for each side to pick up their dead and all the fired cases. They do this so they won't leave evidence for the "greens" or the "blacks" (soldiers and federal or state police)."

The residents in the municipality believe that "somebody important" in one of the groups must have fallen in the first shootout because about 40 minutes after the shooting, there were pickups and cars chasing each other on the flanks of the Cerro de la Culebra (Culebra Hill), about two miles from the municipal seat.

 

Information gathered at the ranch houses and ranches adjacent to Luvianos tell of at least eight shooting skirmishes. The second confrontation, "for certain" -- says a witness --, was near the turn from Luvianos to Caja de Agua, where "the shooting was intense." Minutes later there was another volley of shots "with high powered weapons" at the ranch houses in La Toma de Agua, where the residents say "there were casualties on both sides."

The fighting between suspected gunmen with La Familia Michoacana and Los Caballeros Templarios reached all the way to El Pueblito and Acatitlan, about 10 miles from Luvianos. The chase extended to just past the Acatitlan River, towards the west and in the direction of La Estancia, where the road joins with the intersection that goes to Zacazonapan. 

Some residents say that the final confrontation took place in the outskirts of La Estancia, hours after the slaughter on the river crossing at Barranca del Gato.

Adding up the testimony, it's calculated there were between 27 and 32 (persons) killed, and dozens of wounded. "They picked up their dead and took them away on canvas covered trucks; that's what they always do," says a local.

 

Along with their casualties, both sides carried away the evidence: they didn't leave any cartridge cases and they swept the roads with tires tied to the rear bumpers of the pickup trucks.

Law enforcement; not involved

The majority of the accounts agree that the municipal authorities and the state and federal police detachments assigned to Luvianos remained totally quiet during the gunfights. "They've paid them off," says a woman. "All of us who live around here  already know that when the shooting starts the only thing we can do is hide because the police and the military are good for nothing," she adds, then she begs us not to publish her name.

 

Nobody in Luvianos can say with certainty which groups fought each other on August 26. The majority believes they were different groups from La Familia Michoacana who split up and are fighting to control the plaza. Others argue that Los Caballeros Templarios want to take the plaza from La Familia Michoacana, controlled around here by "El Faraon" and "La Marrana."  The first individual is an alleged friend and protege of President Enrique Pena Nieto, former governor of Mexico State.

 

Another allegation is that it was a battle between the groups that La Familia Michoacana and the Zetas have put together and Los Caballeros Templarios and La Mano.

 

Some residents say that about seven young men from that area died in the shootout, but others state that the criminal groups won't touch people from the municipality. The first witnesses recount that they saw several young men run into the cornfields, some of them wounded. They say they went up to the houses to ask for clean clothes to change their bloody ones.

 

Despite this, another local says that: "Many of the young men who took off running and the ones they picked up (dead) looked like Central Americans, because of the way they talked when they knocked on doors and because of the features of those that were killed. They were between 17 and 30 years old. It's very common now for the people who work for the Luvianos criminal groups to be Central Americans".

 

The authorities of the State of Mexico and of the Luvianos  municipality declared that on August 26 there was no slaughter nor any high intensity confrontation among suspected drug trafficking groups.

However, after that, beginning that afternoon dozens of federal and state police officers, in addition to several Army squadrons (sic), arrived at the municipal seat. They patrolled the battlefield hours after the shootouts but did not find bodies nor any cartridge cases.

 

They told the people here not to leave their homes during the next few days; the businesses closed down and classes were suspended from Monday through Wednesday in all of the Luvianos schools," a woman says.