La Familia Michoacana
La Familia Michoacana, La Familia, or LFM is a Mexican drug cartel and organized crime syndicate based in the Mexican state of Michoacán. Formerly allied to the Gulf Cartel—as part of Los Zetas—it split off in 2006. The cartel was founded by Carlos Rosales Mendoza, a close associate of Osiel Cárdenas. The second leader, Nazario Moreno González, known as El Más Loco, preached his organization's divine right to eliminate enemies. He carried a "bible" of his own sayings and insisted that his army of traffickers and hitmen avoid using the narcotics they produce and sell. Nazario Moreno's partners were José de Jesús Méndez Vargas, Servando Gómez Martínez and Enrique Plancarte Solís, each of whom has a bounty of $2 million for his capture, and were contesting the control of the organization.
The cartel is known to produce large amounts of methamphetamine in clandestine laboratories in Michoacan.
In July 2009 and November 2010, La Familia Michoacana offered to retreat and even disband their cartel, "with the condition that both the Federal Government, and State and Federal Police commit to safeguarding the security of the state of Michoacán." However, President Felipe Calderón's government refused to strike a deal with the cartel and rejected their calls for dialogue. According to federal and state sources, La Familia Michoacana has been increasingly involved in Michoacán's politics, impelling their favorite candidates, financing their campaigns, and forcing other parties to renounce their candidacies. As of 2011, La Familia Michoacana still exists, despite the killing of its founder and leader Nazario Moreno González,. At this point, it was present mostly in el Estado de Mexico. By June 2020, however, they were no longer reported as one of cartels still active in the Tierra Caliente region, which covers parts of the states of Michoacán, Guerrero and the State of Mexico.
History
Mexican analysts believe that La Familia formed in the 1980s with the stated purpose of bringing order to Michoacán, emphasizing help and protection for the poor. In its initial incarnation, La Familia formed as a group of vigilantes, spurred to power to counter interloping kidnappers and drug dealers, who were their stated enemies. Since then, La Familia has capitalized on its reputation, building its myth, power and reach to transition into a criminal gang itself.La Familia came to the foreground in the 1990s as the Gulf Cartel's paramilitary group, designed to seize control of the illegal drug trade in Michoacán state from rival drug cartels. While it initially trained with Los Zetas, in 2006 the group splintered off into an independent drug trafficking operation. La Familia has a strong rivalry with both Los Zetas and the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel, but strong ties with the Sinaloa Cartel of Joaquin Guzman. La Familia Michoacana was one of the strongest and fastest growing cartels in Mexico.
After the death of Nazario Moreno González, José de Jesús Méndez Vargas took control of the cartel. However, his authority was disputed by the cartel co-founders Enrique Plancarte Solís and Servando Gómez Martínez, who formed an offshoot of La Familia calling itself Caballeros Templarios. Méndez Vargas was captured on June 21, 2011 by Mexican police in the state of Aguascalientes. The Mexican Federal Police declared that the cartel has been disbanded. However, the organization continued to exercise its power and influence throughout Michoacán and Guerrero states.
In 2017, former La Familia leader Arnoldo Rueda-Medina, who was arrested in Mexico in 2009, was extradited to the United States and sentenced to 45 years in prison in 2018 after being convicted on drug trafficking charges.
Alliances
On February 2010, the major cartels aligned in two factions. One was made up of the Juárez Cartel, Tijuana Cartel, Los Zetas, and the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel. The other faction was made up of the Gulf Cartel, Sinaloa Cartel, and La Familia Michoacana. La Familia Michoacana became a rival of its splinter group Knights Templar. Mexican Attorney General reported that La Familia Cartel was "exterminated" by 2011.Operations
La Familia has been known to be unusually violent. Its members use murder and torture to quash rivals, while building a social base in the Mexican state of Michoacán. It once was the fastest-growing cartel in the country's drug war and is a religious cult-like group that celebrates family values. In one incident in Uruapan in 2006, the cartel members tossed five severed heads onto the dance floor of the Sol y Sombra night club along with a message that read: "The Family doesn’t kill for money. It doesn’t kill women. It doesn’t kill innocent people, only those who deserve to die. Know that this is divine justice."Like other cartels, La Familia used the port city of Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán to import narcotics from Peru and Colombia. They also produced large amounts of methamphetamine along the highlands of the Sierra Madre. The cartel has moved from smuggling and selling drugs and turned itself into a much more ambitious criminal organization which acts as a parallel state in much of Michoacán. It extorts "taxes" from businesses, pays for community projects, controls petty crime, and settles some local disputes. Despite its short history, it has emerged as Mexico's largest supplier of methamphetamines to the United States, with supply channels running deep into the Midwestern United States, and has increasingly become involved in the distribution of cocaine, marijuana, and other narcotics. Michael Braun, former DEA chief of operations, states that it operates "superlabs" in Mexico capable of producing up to 100 pounds of meth in eight hours. However, according to DEA officials, it claims to oppose the sale of drugs to Mexicans. It also sells unlicensed DVDs, smuggles people to the United States, and runs a debt-collecting service by kidnapping defaulters. Because oftentimes they use fake and sometimes original uniforms of several police agencies, most of their kidnap victims are stopped under false pretenses of routine inspections or report of stolen vehicles, and then taken hostage.
La Familia has also bought some local politicians. 20 municipal officials have been murdered in Michoacán, including two mayors. Having established its authority, it then names local police chiefs. In May 2009, the Mexican Federal Police detained 10 Michoacán mayors and 20 other local officials suspected of being associated with the cartel.
On July 11, 2009, a cartel lieutenant—Arnoldo Rueda Medina—was arrested. La Familia members attacked the Federal Police station in Morelia to try to free Rueda shortly after his arrest. During the attacks, two soldiers and three federal policemen were killed. When that failed, cartel members attacked Federal Police installations in at least a half-dozen Michoacán cities in retribution.
Three days later, on July 14, 2009, the cartel tortured and murdered twelve Mexican Federal Police agents and dumped their bodies along the side of a mountain highway along with a written message: "So that you come for another. We will be waiting for you here." The federal agents were investigating crime in Michoacán state; President Calderón, responded to the violence by dispatching additional 1,000 Federal Police officers to the area. The infusion, which more than tripled the number of Federal Police officers patrolling Michoacán, angered Michoacán Governor Leonel Godoy Rangel, who called it 'an occupation' and said he had not been consulted. Days later, 10 municipal police officers were arrested in connection with the slayings of the 12 federal agents.
The governor's half-brother Julio César Godoy Toscano, who was elected July 5, 2009 to the lower house of Congress, was accused of being a top-ranking member of La Familia Michoacana drug cartel and of providing political protection for the cartel. Based on these charges, on December 14, 2010, Godoy Toscano was impeached from the lower house of Congress and therefore lost his parliamentary immunity; he fled and remains a fugitive.
President Calderón stated that the country's drug cartels had grown so powerful that they now posed a threat to the future of Mexican democracy. His strategy of direct confrontation and law enforcement is not popular with some segments of Mexican society, where battling violent drug gangs has brought out several human rights charges against the Mexican military.
Project Coronado
On October 22, 2009, U.S. federal authorities announced the results of a four-year investigation into the operations of La Familia Michoacana in the United States dubbed Project Coronado. It was the largest U.S. raid ever against Mexican drug cartels operating in the U.S. In 19 different states, 303 individuals were taken into custody in a coordinated effort by local, state, and federal law enforcement over a two-day period. Seized during the arresting phase was over of cocaine, of methamphetamine, of marijuana, 144 weapons, 109 vehicles, two clandestine drug laboratories, and $3.4 million in U.S. currency.Since the start of "Project Coronado," the investigation has led to the arrest of more than 1,186 people and the seizure of approximately $33 million. Overall, almost of cocaine, of methamphetamine, of heroin, of marijuana, 389 weapons, 269 vehicles, and the two drug labs were seized.
Multi-agency investigations such as Project Coronado were the key to disrupting the operations of complex criminal organizations like La Familia. The investigative efforts in Project Coronado were coordinated by the multi-agency Special Operations Division, comprising agents and analysts from the DEA, FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Marshals Service and ATF, as well as attorneys from the Criminal Division's Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section. More than 300 federal, state, local and foreign law enforcement agencies contributed investigative and prosecutorial resources to Project Coronado through the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.