CJNG paranoia in Tierra caliente, clemente and his family forced into exile

Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat  La Silla Rota

“The CJNG now also includes children on its blacklist: grenade launchers and rifles are pointed at them.”  (CJNG has never established boundaries, children were never off limits)

There are already about 90 families from the Michoacán Sierra de la Tierra Caliente who have had to abandon their homes and heritage to avoid being assassinated by cells of the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación  aka CJNG who residents say are “excessively paranoid.”

The families flee so as not to be burned, beheaded or dismembered alive.

The CJNG now also includes children on its blacklist: grenade launchers and rifles are pointed at them.

La Silla Rota presents stories of two families who have lost everything and now seek to reach the northern border alive to seek asylum in the United States.

This is the first story:  

Don Clemente has no words to describe what he had to live and that forced him to abandon his heritage he built for 30 years. "It's one thing I don't know how to describe. They were going to kill me and my children, says the 53-year-old man with his voice cracking with emotion.

He narrates that a few days ago, heavily armed and hooded people who identified themselves as being from Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación entered his home. The construction worker points out that these men have no scruples, because they not only attacked him, but also his children and his wife.

They were going to start dinner that day, around 9 at night, when the armed group entered their house. They aimed at Clemente with AK47s and at his family with grenade launchers; They asked him to work with them, but he flatly refused. Later, the hit men demanded that he give them data and information about other people, but "I don't have any addresses, nor do I mess with anyone," he reiterates.

At that moment I felt death, sir; that I was going to die with my children," recalls the day laborer, whose voice breaks as the minutes pass. He says that the hit men had already gone to his home again and then returned, so Clemente and his wife took their children and fled through the mountains. They left everything to try to save his life; their home, the truck with their work tools, their clothes and everything they had built for three decades.

We walked more than seven hours; my girl was swept away by water approximately 1.40 meters deep. We saved my boy, but my girl was taken away by the river (later they saved her)

He says that that was only part of the inclement they had to oppose, because they had no food, no money and they were being persecuted by the criminal group. "Because those gentlemen had already told us that they were going to kill us and I preferred to flee, leaving everything in the ranch," reiterates the man, who does not stop shaking. The biggest pain for Clemente, he remembers, is that they messed with his family.

He assures that his children do not owe anything and neither does he. The master bricklayer is well aware that the threats from this criminal organization have gone beyond terror and daily exhibit their crimes in cold blood.

Recently, he talks, a man was burned alive in that area, set on fire with alcohol, until he died. Everything to get information out of him. In the recording you can see the way his face and part of his body burn; days before, the beheading of a woman, also while alive, and the dismemberment of a young man. That was what Clemente and his family were saved from, because it was their destiny, since they consider it to be part of the paranoia of criminals.

For Clemente, the criminals believe that everyone is their enemy and he fears that those towns or ranches will take up arms and defend themselves from this stalking.

THEY TARGETED ME 

The 6 year-old sister and 11 are children of Clemente were at gunpoint by members of a criminal cell to service the CJNG. The minors narrate how they lived that terrifying moment when they were in front of the armed group; with weapons on their foreheads. "When some hooded men arrived and pointed at me, I felt that they were going to kill me with a rifle." The boy uses his memory and enacts, with his little arms, the way in which the armed subjects pointed them at his head. Still shaking with fear.

His sister also remembers that moment when they felt that the hitmen were taking their lives. "They came with a rifle, they pointed them at us and underneath they brought bombs, those of the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación. I felt they were going to kill us," describes the girl. The minor confirms that they were threatened, and that was not all for her, because when they fled through the mountains, they had to cross a deep river with a strong current.

The girl could not swim anymore and halfway up the current the current was such that it snatched her from her parents' arms; however, for the second time, he managed to survive.

THE WORST NIGHTMARE

For Veronica, wife of Clemente and mother of the children, what they experienced was the worst nightmare of his life; a chilling dream already announced by criminals. He said that after more than seven hours that they walked through the mountains, they were finally able to reach a settlement where they provided support and took them to a safe place. Now, they live refugees and their struggle is to reach the country's northern border alive and seek that the United States authorities give them political asylum in the face of harassment by the CJNG.

Verónica does not give credit for what is happening with so much impunity in the Tierra Caliente region and expresses her sadness for the terror that her children experienced. It also hurts him - he adds - to leave his land, his heritage and the dreams that together, as a family, they had built. He emphasizes that what they suffered is what many families experience every day and that for this reason, several communities have already been left empty; ghost towns.

THE WAR OF THE "MENCHO"

Drones with explosives used by CJNG against enemies

This area of Tierra Caliente has been controlled by the criminal organization of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, "El Mencho", who seeks to take over all of Michoacán. The sierra has also been a passage for weapons, vehicles and hitmen for that cartel, despite the military and National Guard deployments, which have also been ambushed.

That region is located on the borders of Michoacán and Jalisco, where the CJNG has recorded scandalous videos in which they show their weapons and the way in which they kill. They show off their weapons, their armored vehicles and the economic power of this criminal group that has increased its attacks on the population, federal and state forces, as well as its opponents.