Federal police officers discovered three huge greenhouses full of marijuana in Tlajomulco, Jalisco.
Mexican authorities discovered three enormous hauls of marijuana across the western states of Jalisco and Nayarit this week, including a sophisticated plantation with genetically modified crops allegedly run by a team of Colombians.
The apparent importation of expertise and the use of cloning methods indicates that Mexican marijuana producers may be responding to changes in the US consumer market by producing higher quality weed, experts and observers said. Authorities released footage of Mexican police uprooting the modified cannabis from pots dug into the ground and incinerating the plants at nighttime.
The greenhouses were allegedly run by a team of 22 Colombian workers.
The first bust came on Saturday, July 25, when Nayarit state police discovered five vast pot plantations in the town of Rosa Blanca, close to the border with Jalisco. Officers also uprooted and incinerated the illicit crops, which reportedly weighed 149 tons and covered a space of 15,000 square meters.
The next day, Mexico’s National Security Commission, or CNS, announced the discovery of three giant greenhouses full of marijuana plants in the municipality of Tlajomulco, Jalisco, southwest of Guadalajara…
The marijuana had been genetically modified to improve its size and quality.
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“El Menchito” was arrested for the third time in 18 months on Wednesday.
The U.S.-born son of one of Mexico’s most wanted drug lords has been captured, released, and re-captured in less than 10 days, in a farcical series of events that analysts say raises questions about the competence of Mexico’s police and judicial institutions.
Ruben Oseguera Gonzalez, the suspected second-in-command of the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel, had also been detained and released in 2014.
Known as “El Menchito,” Oseguera, 25, was born in California and holds dual US-Mexican citizenship. Federal forces arrested him in the early hours of June 23 during a joint police and army raid on his home in the Zapopan suburb of the city of Guadalajara, Jalisco, authorities said.
Charged with organized crime and money laundering, Oseguera was then transferred to the Altiplano maximum-security prison in the State of Mexico on Saturday…
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Nino Leon has sold tejuino and tepache in Guadalajara for almost 50 years.
“Before the Spanish arrived here, the tribes used to prepare these drinks as a kind of potion to get drunk,” Nino Leon tells me as he serves up two glasses of tepache and tejuino from the metallic vats wedged in the backseat of his weathered Ford Taurus.
“Nobody knows the precise origin of these drinks but they’ve always been most common in Jalisco and the surrounding areas of western Mexico,” he says.
A plump 66-year-old from Guadalajara, the Jalisco state capital, Leon is a father of two and grandfather of six. For 48 years he has supported his family by selling tepache and tejuino out of the back of his car.
Tepache (left) and tejuino (right) are made from fermented pineapple and maize respectively.
“I was 18 years old when my grandfather taught me how to make tepache and tejuino,” he says. “I still prepare them just the way he showed me. There are other brewers who have newer methods, but this is the traditional way.”
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The Tequila Files 