A bullet punctured the windshield of a vehicle in the community of Ocotlán, Jalisco, after a March 19 shootout that left 11 people dead. (Photo by Victor Hugo Ornelas/VICE News)
Over a breakfast of chilaquiles and coffee at a traditional restaurant in Guadalajara, a tequila producer named Eduardo Pérez recently described how suspected members of the city’s dominant drug cartel demanded extortion payments in order to keep himself and his business “protected.”
“They warned me that if I didn’t pay, then I’d be in trouble,” Pérez told VICE News. “I changed my phone number and everything, but the extortion continued.”
For almost two years, Pérez paid his extortionists 200,000 pesos each month (about $13,400) to avoid repercussions. He was eventually forced to close his business because of the payments to suspected extortionists linked to the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, or CJNG.
The drug gang is currently muscling itself into headlines and onto the country’s security agenda by carrying out ambushes against police forces. The latest attack, on Monday night, left 15 Jalisco state police officers dead, including one female agent.
Two boys pass a bullet-ridden home in Ocotlán. (Photo by Victor Hugo Ornelas)
“You have to pay the famous quotas. If you don’t, then they’ll start to harm you or your business,” said Pérez, who owns a tequila company in Jalisco, one of Mexico’s largest and most important states.
“This isn’t just happening to us,” he added. “It’s happening in all kinds of different industries in this region. It’s really frightening…”
This is the second in a two-part series on the Jalisco New Generation Cartel that I worked on with Mexican journalist Víctor Hugo Ornelas for VICE News. Click here to read part two in full.
Click here to read part one in English o haz clic aquí para leer la primera parte en español.
Jalisco’s ‘New Generation’ is becoming one of Mexico’s most powerful and dangerous drug cartels
A military raid on a Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación safe house in Guadalajara in 2012.
Cartel gunmen ambushed a state police convoy on a remote stretch of highway in Jalisco on Monday, killing fifteen police officers in the most recent bloody incident to rock the western region of Mexico.
Authorities blamed the ambush on Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, a criminal group that is little known outside western Mexico but which some observers say may be among the country’s most powerful — and deadly — drug cartels today.
Jalisco public security commissioner Alejandro Solorio denounced the ambush as a “cowardly attack,” which occurred in the municipality of San Sebastián del Oeste, a rugged area between the tourist port of Puerto Vallarta and the state capital Guadalajara.
The assailants, who had blocked the highway with burning vehicles to prevent reinforcements from arriving, also shot at the state officers with grenade launchers. They reportedly escaped without suffering casualties.
One female officer was among those killed and five other police were hospitalized with injuries.
Nueva Generación — or New Generation — is just five years old and has been largely overshadowed by Mexico’s more infamous cartels in the country’s soaring drug violence, such as the Zetas and the Knights Templar.
In that time, it has quietly built an extensive criminal empire and now appears to be escalating its conflict with state authorities just two months before the local elections in Jalisco…
This is the first in a two-part series on the Jalisco New Generation Cartel that I’ve been working on with Mexican journalist Víctor Hugo Ornelas for VICE News. Click here to read part one in full.
Alfredo Romero led a march through Guadalajara last week to mark six months since 43 students disappeared at the hands of corrupt police officers in Guerrero.
In a video interview posted on YouTube this week, Mexican businessman Alfredo Romero said he was kidnapped for five weeks for planning to denounce corruption by Aristóteles Sandoval, the governor of the western state of Jalisco.
Romero told Luke Rudkowski, a journalist from the grassroots media outlet We Are Change, that he uncovered evidence of corruption when he was working for an Italian construction firm in Jalisco.
Romero claimed to have seen documents that showed that Sandoval had falsified expenses and embezzled public funds during his time as mayor of Guadalajara, Mexico’s second biggest city and the capital of Jalisco state.
Romero said he saw receipts that revealed that Sandoval spent just 120,000 pesos ($7,900) on renovating the Minerva fountain, one of Guadalajara’s most iconic landmarks, in 2011, despite claiming to have spent 1.2 million pesos ($79,000), ten times the actual amount.
The remaining 1.08 million pesos of public money went into the funds for Sandoval’s campaign in the gubernatorial election, Romero alleged.
He also claimed to have read an email to the construction company in which Sandoval offered them a highly coveted contract to develop the Creative Digital City, a major development plan that aims to transform Guadalajara’s historic city center into a hub for digital media firms.
Sandoval allegedly offered to sell the contract to the firm for $15 million. Romero said this was completely illegal because public contracts are supposed to be granted through an open bidding process and the governor is not meant to be involved in this process…
Click here to read this story in full at Latin Correspondent.
The Tequila Files 