A day of terror after the killing of Mexican cartel boss El Mencho

0 0 5 minutes read

A day of terror after the killing of Mexican cartel boss El Mencho

https://www.profitableratecpm.com/f4ffsdxe?key=39b1ebce72f3758345b2155c98e6709c

ETZATLÁN, Mexico — There are two sides to town on the Jalisco Tequila Highway.

One is the charming pueblo at the base of the foothills lined with neat rows of agave cacti. In the central square, you’ll see swaths of hand-woven fabric draped like awnings over the cobbled streets – pops of pink, blue, yellow and green providing welcome shade from the afternoon heat. Locals boast that their sky tejido is world famous and has even been exhibited in Dubai.

The other version of Eztatlán is the one most people are afraid to talk about.

It’s the place where cartel foot soldiers torched the gas station last week, along with a bus depot, a public bank and dozens of vehicles, leaving residents to hide in their homes during a 24-hour reign of terror.

Many remain fearful, wondering if a sense of normalcy will ever return and expressing frustration with local authorities, who have seemingly done nothing to intervene in the chaos.

This area was once the domain of early Mexican cartel bosses, including Rafael Caro Quintro – “El Numero Uno” – who was rumored to have kept a residence nearby. Today, it belongs to the Jalisco New Generation cartel. The recent chaos follows a Feb. 22 Mexican military operation that killed the group’s leader, Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho.”

The retaliation was widespread, affecting at least 20 states, and days after the chaos, the charred hulks of Oxxo vehicles and stores were still visible heading west from Guadalajara, the state capital, toward the Pacific.

Reaching Etzatlán – pronounced etts-at-LAN – takes about 90 minutes to drive from Guadalajara. It is one of the hardest hit places in terms of property damage. Official statistics are difficult to obtain, but town residents – many of whom asked to be identified only by their first names to ensure their safety – estimate that around 80 cars were set on fire in a municipality of just 20,000 residents.

Share via

“It’s not just a vehicle, it’s your whole life, how to find work,” said María, a retiree who lives in a modest house a few minutes’ drive from the city’s historic center.

The main industries outside of tourism are livestock farming and agriculture, and many residents do not have insurance for their vehicles. María remembers the rumor that spread on WhatsApp on Sunday, February 22, that cartel members were lighting fires in the city. They threatened to burn down any business open that day. Nearly a week later, schools still remained closed.

City police and firefighters were nowhere to be found, she and other city residents said. Those who set the fire were teenagers on motorcycles and they didn’t carry weapons or bother to mask their faces.

“All they had were cans of gasoline and stones to break the windows,” María said. “The night was endless with explosions. The next day, it was great silence.”

María was among the residents sweeping up ashes and trying to clean scorch marks from streets and buildings when The Times visited Etzatlán in the days after El Mencho’s death.

As a police truck approached and threatened to interrupt the cleanup efforts, Maria stood in the street and blocked the way, hands on hips in a pose of defiance.

“We won’t let you pass“, she told the police. “Get out of here! We don’t want you here! The state should have been here before, if only to help us clean up.”

The police truck idled for a moment before backing down the street, drawing a round of applause from the crowd that had formed in the neighborhood.

A row of parked cars had been set on fire and the flames had swept the sidewalk to the threshold of a family home. The front door was charred and the smell of smoke and soot lingered in the entryway.

The matriarch of the house, Sylvia, 64, said it took them five hours of dousing with buckets to put out the flames. The house, she said, is more than 200 years old and was built by her Spanish ancestors, with a tiled courtyard in the center and Moorish accents on the masonry. Repairing the damage will require special materials and money they don’t have. Her daughter’s car was among those burned, leaving her without a way to get to work.

three women pose for a portrait inside their home

The family rearranged the rooms with their daughters and grandchildren so that no one would sleep in the smoke-damaged room that faces the street.

A former teacher whose work took her to rural towns, Sylvia said some of her students talked about the drug trade that operated in the shadows: poppy fields hidden deep in the mountains, landing strips for planes from Colombia. But it was a simpler time.

“Everything was different back then,” she says. The cartels were left alone. “They never joked with people.”

After the assassination of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent in 1985, what was then known as the Guadalajara Cartel collapsed as its leaders were hunted down. The Sinaloans – co-led by the infamous Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán – rose to power, then splinter groups formed and fought each other, with El Mencho’s group becoming the dominant force in the 2010s.

Along the way, there have been generations of migration, and many families from Jalisco are now spread throughout California. There is a “Little Etzatlán” in Sylmar, with other pockets of the city’s immigrants in other parts of the San Fernando Valley.

As fires burned after El Mencho’s death, videos of Etzatlán circulated widely on TikTok and Instagram. Residents said it was their way of appealing for help when local authorities appeared to be standing idly by.

Things were relatively calm in Etzatlán. There are rumors of paramilitary training camps in the mountains, but the sinister presence lingers mostly just beneath the surface. Last year, Rancho Izaguirre, just 45 minutes off the highway, was discovered where bone fragments, clothing and other evidence indicated the cartel had disposed of the bodies.

Authorities had raided the ranch before, but it was only when a civilian-led group searching for the remains of the missing began searching the surrounding area that the full extent of the horror of the “extermination camp” became apparent.

Yet life continued in Etzatlán, until the sense of tranquility was shattered. Residents wonder why so much of their town was burned. Questions also remain about what was not affected: the police station and the homes of local officials.

No one seems to hope that those responsible will face consequences.

“Other places in the world would call this terrorism,” said María, the retiree who stopped police from stopping street cleaning.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum disagrees. Asked at a news conference last week about the aftermath of El Mencho’s death, Sheinbaum said blocking roads and damaging property were certainly crimes, “but it has nothing to do with terrorism.”