Development: On 9 March Mexico’s national public security system (SNSP) confirmed the death of Nazario ‘El Chayo’ Moreno González, one of the founding leaders of the criminal gang Los Caballeros Templarios (LCT), in a shootout with federal security forces in Michoacán.
Significance: Moreno’s death is being touted as another victory for the federal government led by President Enrique Peña Nieto in its efforts to restore the rule of law in the troubled state of Michoacán. The inability of the previous administration, led by former president Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), to weaken the LCT gave rise to the current security crisis in Michoacán, with the emergence of ‘self-defence’ armed vigilante groups across the state to fight the LCT, eventually forcing an unprecedented presidential order for a federal intervention last month. The capture of the LCT’s top seven leaders is one of main demands of the self-defence groups as part of a recently-agreed deal with the federal government for their ‘incorporation’. Producing results appears to be a priority for the Peña Nieto government.
Key points:
- A prominent member of the La Familia Michoacana drug gang, Moreno was long wanted by the Mexican authorities. He was placed on Mexico’s most wanted list in 2009 and was hunted intensively by the federal security forces as part of Calderón’s ‘war’ on organised crime. In December 2010, the Calderón administration announced that federal security forces had killed Moreno, in what was hailed as victory for the government of the time. However, Moreno’s body was never found.
- Moreno resurfaced in 2011 when, along with Servando ‘La Tuta’ Gómez Martínez, he was identified by locals as one of the founders of the pseudo-religious LCT. After it first became visible (in early 2011), the LCT publicly challenged Calderón’s authority on several occasions and even accused the former president (a Michoacán native) of having links to drug trafficking groups. This made the LCT leaders priority targets under Calderón, but efforts to capture them were largely unsuccessful.
- The self-defence groups say they will not lay down their weapons until all of Michoacán’s municipalities are ‘cleansed’ of the LCT and its members arrested or killed. It appears that the Peña Nieto government’s strategy is to deliver on this, knowing that it will also play well with the general public. Indeed, yesterday’s announcement coincided with the release of a Mitofsky poll according to which Peña Nieto’s approval rating increased from 47.6% to 50.3% following the 22 February arrest of the world’s most wanted drug kingpin, Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, with 45.8% of respondents agreeing that Peña Nieto now “holds the reins of the country”.
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