While President López Obrador was celebrating the fifth year of what he has called “the triumph of the people” in Mexico City’s Zócalo, in the town of Taxco, in the southern state of Guerrero, the night fell and tortillerías, poultry shops, butchers, and hardware stores closed in a cascade.
On June 29, an armed commando opened fire against the “Grupo Misión” tortilla shop, located on the main avenue of that city. Two people died and four others were injured. In the midst of an explosion of panic, the massive closure of businesses began.
The merchants attributed the attack to the suffocating harassment of La Familia Michoacana, the cartel that owns and lords the municipality, whose cells squeeze the businesses until they are exhausted, with the increase in “protection fees”
There is no business in the center of Taxco that is not under rent. Only the extortion of silver artisans leaves organized crime with profits of more than 1,200,000 pesos every Saturday. About 60 million a year.
In recent months, the flight of dozens of merchants has been reported. The Michoacan Family controls the sale of the main products: from beer and soft drinks to tortillas, meat, bread, chicken, fruits, vegetables, and jug water.
They are the ones who distribute them and they are the ones who put a price on these products.
The climate of insecurity has reached levels that no one had experienced before in Taxco. Eight days before the attack on the “Grupo Misión” tortilla shop, the City Hall building, in the heart of the city, was evicted. A bomb threat had arrived.
The military cordoned off the area and finally detected the existence of four grenades, three of the artisan type and one more of fragmentation. Mayor Mario Figueroa Mundo, of the disputed Fuerza Por México, tried to hide the facts and maintained that the building was being fumigated as a result of “a plague of little animals.”
According to El Sur, the military took the devices out in hermetic boxes, to detonate them on the outskirts of the town.
In the following two days, eight municipal police officers were deprived of their liberty by members of organized crime. They appeared several days later with their hands tied and tortured. Local sources affirmed that they had been called to account by the plaza manager “for not knowing how to explain how the explosives appeared in the City Hall.”
Since June 6, the director of Civil Protection of Taxco, Jaime Clemente Quiroz, had disappeared. Strangely, his search sheet was not published until the 30th of that month.
Taxco’s municipal president Mario Figueroa affirmed in April, that Taxco was a safe destination: “the best municipality in Guerrero.” The mayor gave as proof that “we had a Holy Week like in no other town.” Participants in that celebration, the so-called “Encruzados”, had denounced, however, that La Familia Michoacana had forced them to buy the crosses from them, and demanded obligatory fees to allow them to take part in the festivity.
Even Bishop Emeritus Salvador Rangel assured that he had had to “agree” with the criminals so that they would allow the celebration to pass calmly.
With absolute cynicism, when the bishop’s version was presented to Figueroa, he replied: “The truth is, I was not present. If he had been present, I would tell him: ‘Yes, it’s true, he agreed’; but since I was not present… I cannot speak for him”.
In early June 2021, the boss of La Familia Michoacana in Taxco, Roberto Carlos Zagal Jacobo, alias El Pelón (son of Ranulfo Zagal Maldonado, leader of that criminal group in Taxco for several years and who was apprehended in November 2020), he ordered all the leaders of organizations in Taxco to be “raised” – public transport, street vendors, mass businessmen, Tortilleros, butchers, bakers, and even truck drivers, among others.
The “raised” were taken to Tectipac, where they were given instructions for their members to vote for Figueroa Mundo (linked to Morena) and where they were ordered to send photographs of the ballot to certain telephone numbers on election day” duly marked”.
According to intelligence sources, Figueroa had reached an agreement with the Michoacana Family after the criminal group had attacked him in December 2020. The candidate’s campaign closure was overwhelming. His electoral triumph, too.
In the first months of his administration, he was accused of having “sold” the municipality to La Familia Michoacana: the Jalisco Cartel even announced that it had a video in which Figueroa met with El Pelón.
With his traditional style, the mayor has declared that these are accusations of “sore” because “pain does not heal so easily.”
Source: El Universal
