The driver says, “The Scorpion said he needs some stuff,” and the boss reaches into his own truck and hands the co-pilot a plastic bag with what appears to be a kilogram brick of cocaine, apparently for ”the troops.″ Jalisco keeps its sizeable army of troops running with a potent mixture of money - the cartel has a lot, from trafficking fentanyl and meth into the United States - and cocaine, which it flies in from Costa Rica.Īs the local boss stands at an impromptu street-side command post, a pickup full of Jalisco gunmen with AR15 assault rifles pulls up. “Everybody should mind his own business.” His beef with the Viagras and other local gangs he’s fighting is that “they want everything for themselves.” “We’re narcos,” said the local Jalisco leader, who did not give his name. Jalisco is the one cartel in Mexico that doesn’t hide what it is, and doesn’t play to the politics of press relations or restraint. One female protester described how her father died in early 2020 because the Viagras wouldn’t allow them past to get to a hospital.ĭozens of cartel gunmen openly wear bulletproof vests emblazoned with the group’s Spanish initials, “CJNG” - Jalisco New Generation Cartel - on the back, and on the front, “FEM” - “Mencho’s Special Forces,” a reference to the nickname of the cartel’s leader, Nemesio Oseguera. Others are just tired of paying the Viagras’ war taxes and being cut off from the outside world. Some residents say they are strongly pressured to participate in the protests, fearing their water or electricity might be cut off if they don’t. Jalisco is everywhere in Aguililla, from pickups and homemade armored cars bearing the cartel’s initials to the small trampolines the gang installed for children in every village. That is actually a fairly accurate description of government policy: preserving the status quo, and making each cartel stay in its own territory.īut Jalisco won’t accept the government as arbiter of drug cartel territorial divisions the local Jalisco cartel leader says the army is only trying to protect the weaker of the two gangs, the Viagras, for reasons of corruption. “You don’t know how hard it is to be paying a war tax that is being used to kill us.” Because they must occasionally pass through those roadblocks, none of the residents wanted to give their names for fear of reprisals.īut one explained it this way to the army squad: “The only road into Aguililla is blocked and controlled by a cartel that is only 500 yards away from you, and you (the army) are not doing anything to protect our right to travel freely,” he said. “Everything indicates that group is the Jalisco cartel.”Ībove all, what residents want is for the Viagras’ checkpoints to be cleared and the road opened again. “What we need is for one cartel to take control, stop the fighting and impose some semblance of calm,” said a local priest. “Let the two cartels fight it out and kill each other,” another demonstrator shouted. The residents want the army to either fight both cartels, or at least let the two gangs battle. Many of the demonstrators carried rocks and powerful slingshots, but did not use them. “We’d rather be killed by you than killed by those criminals!” one demonstrator shouted at soldiers during a tense, hour-long confrontation between demonstrators and a squad of a dozen troops who took cover behind a barricade of car tires. Limes and cattle heading out, or supplies heading in, must pay a war tax to the Viagras. The army policy effectively allows the Viagras - best known for kidnapping and extorting money - to set up roadblocks and checkpoints that have choked off all commerce with Aguililla. Residents of Aguililla are fed up with the army’s strategy of simply separating the Jalisco and the Michoacan-based Viagras gang.
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