Eleven people were found shot to death around Mexico April 4, some bearing signs of torture and left with threatening "narco-messages." Four of the victims were found in a car in Apatzingán, Michoacán [2], along with a message threatening the Zetas, the paramilitary arm of the Gulf Cartel [3]. The message was signed "La Familia [4]," Michoacán's reigning crime machine.
Another slain man was found in the Michoacán port city of Lazaro Cardenas, also with a threatening message from La Familia to the Zetas. A sixth man was found on a highway in Morelia, Michoacán's capital. He had been shot in the head three times and left with a T-shirt pulled over his head and his hands cuffed behind his back. A seventh was found shot to death in the town of Tacambaro, in the Michoacán highlands.
Four other bodies were found around Guerrero [5], the next state down the coast from Michoacán, including two men left in the trunk of a car in the resort town of Zihuatanejo. The two were blindfolded and had their hands tied behind their backs. Another man was found burned on a highway linking Mexico City to the resort city of Acapulco and a fourth died in a shootout in Chilpancingo, Guerrero's cpaital.
On April 3, Alberto Rayas Rodriguez, chief homicide detective in western Jalisco [6] state, was killed when the two gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on his car. Last month, Rayas Rodriguez had participated in the dismantling of a presumed local Zetas cell that led to the arrest of five suspects. (AP [7], La Jornada [8], April 4)
On March 30, what was described as an armed "commando" attacked a municipal police patrol car in Apatzingán with machine guns and grenades, leaving three police injured. The assailants all escaped. (Milenio [9], March 30)
See our last post on Mexico's narco wars [3].
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