Knights Templar kingpin Servando “La Tuta” Gomez was finally captured in Morelia last Friday.
Mexican security forces captured the heads of two of the nation’s most feared and violent drug cartels in the last week, but security experts remain unconvinced of the effectiveness of the government’s strategy in the war on drugs.
For every capo the government brings down, several more spring up in his place like the snarling heads of a Hydra, while the cartels’ finances and the shady figures that protect them remain untouched.
This week’s arrests were the latest in a string of recent detentions and killings of key figures within the pseudo-religious Knights Templar cartel and the ultraviolent paramilitary group Los Zetas.
First, just as he was preparing to tuck into a chocolate cake to celebrate his 49th birthday, Servando “La Tuta” Gómez, the last remaining figurehead of the Knights Templars, was arrested in Morelia, the capital of the western state of Michoacán, last Friday.
Then, early on Wednesday morning, Los Zetas boss Omar Treviño Morales was captured in a wealthy suburb of the northern city of Monterrey.
The Enrique Peña Nieto administration boasts an excellent record of bringing down Mexico’s most infamous gangsters, having also arrested almost all of the most prominent leaders of the Sinaloa, Gulf, Juárez, Tijuana, Beltrán Leyva and Guerreros Unidos cartels.
Most notably, the government recaptured Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the world’s most wanted drug lord, 13 years after he escaped from a maximum-security prison, in February 2014.
The only major figures yet to be apprehended are Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Ramos, the head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel; and Guzmán’s former partners in the Sinaloa Cartel: Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Juan José “El Azul” Esparragoza, who is rumored to still be alive following unconfirmed reports of his death last summer…
Click here to read this article in full at Latin Correspondent.
Mexico’s beleaguered President Enrique Peña Nieto touched down in London on Monday for a three-day state visit intended to strengthen trade and cultural ties between Mexico and the United Kingdom.
Peña Nieto’s arrival came with controversy in the UK, with some outlets in the British press expressing concern over the government’s decision to roll out the red carpet for the state visit, given the level of human rights abuses reported in Mexico. The Mexican president and First Lady Angelica Rivera will stay at Buckingham Palace and meet the queen and Prime Minister David Cameron.
On Tuesday, Peña Nieto and his wife are scheduled to visit Westminster Abbey and be treated to a banquet at Buckingham Palace.
Peña Nieto has been lauded on the international stage for passing an array of market-friendly reforms and jailing some of Mexico’s top drug lords, including Servando “La Tuta” Gomez, the head of the Knights Templar cartel, who was captured on Friday after an eight-month manhunt.
However, his image has been tarred by recent corruption scandals and the likely massacre of 43 teachers college students last September, which caused the United Nations to condemn Mexico’s record on forced disappearances last month.
The president was also embarrassed recently when Mexican film director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu used his Academy Awards acceptance speech to implore that Mexico “find and build the government that we deserve”…
Click here to read this feature in full at VICE News.
The Alliance for Healthy Food warns that one in three Mexican children will suffer from diabetes in their lifetime.
With one-third of Mexican children likely to develop diabetes during their lifetime, a group of civic associations known as the Alliance for Healthy Food have called for the removal of junk food and related marketing from children’s lives.
The Alliance for Healthy Food’s mass media campaign, entitled “What did your children eat today?” aims to raise awareness of this health crisis which is being fueled by excessive consumption of junk food and sugary drinks.
The campaign is targeted at parents, to encourage them to make better dietary choices for their children, and at lawmakers, to persuade them to pass more stringent legislation against junk food and sugary drink advertising that targets Mexican children.
“Government officials and legislators have a decisive role to play everywhere in safeguarding the future of children,” said Alejandro Calvillo of the consumer rights organization El Poder del Consumidor, one of more than 20 public interest organizations and social movements that comprise the Alliance for Healthy Food.
“When children see junk food and its pervasive marketing in every corner of their environment, and when the government and educators fail to inform consumers and children of the health risks of certain foods, we are failing our children,” Calvillo added.
Full-blown health crisis
Mexico has the highest rate of adult obesity in the world, with one third of all adults obese, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. One-third of children and seventy percent of adults are overweight or obese.
Estimates for the number of Mexicans killed by diabetes each year range from 70,000 to 100,000 – roughly the same number of people killed in Mexico’s war on drugs in the last eight years…
Click here to read this article in full at Latin Correspondent.
The Tequila Files 