The world has been outraged by the murder of five Mexican youngsters who were lured to join a gang under the pretense of offering them a job, and it has been claimed that the drug cartel ranks ordered their meeting.
In Lagos de Moreno, a town in the central Mexican state of Jalisco, the childhood friends, ranging in age from 19 to 22, were last known to be present on August 11th.
Journalist Hector De Mauleon informed that a group of 10 individuals carrying weapons apprehended bystanders from their vehicle in San Miguel and coerced them into a white truck and a vehicle with tinted windows.
A disturbing video of their faces covered in blood and bruises, with their mouths taped shut and their knees exposed, was widely shared on social media.
The individuals were instructed to lie down, and one of the five was instructed to strike, pierce, and behead him.
The Attorney General’s Office discovered the location in the La Orilla del Agua community where the photo and video were purportedly captured on Wednesday afternoon.
Hours later, they identified the remains of four bodies on a charred farm and are investigating whether these bodies belong to four people.
Early Monday, a charred brown Volkswagen Jetta was discovered engulfed in flames on the highway connecting Lagos de Moreno and Encarnacion Diaz, with an additional body discovered in the trunk.
According to El Pais, Miranda Martínez and Adolfo Jaime, both 21 years old, were victims of the 2016 National Olympics. Miranda is a soccer fanatic and Adolfo is a bricklayer. In different categories, a professional cyclist named Dante Hernández Cedillo, who is 22 years old, won two gold medals. The Jetta VW owned by Alberto Diego Santoyo Lara, a 20-year-old blacksmith, was found burned.
Roberto Olmeda Cuellar, a 20-year-old student studying industrial engineering at the University of Guadalajara, and Uriel Galván González, who is only 19 and has a strong passion for boxing and cycling, have been identified as the remaining individuals.
On Thursday, it emerged that five individuals might have been lured by the promise of work to join the ranks of the cartel operatives, as they were told.
On August 9th, at least two of the security guards who were going to work part-time had contact with a person they knew and had a connection with at a call center.
The Universal El newspaper sources informed that five individuals then arranged to meet during the annual city celebrations, in honor of their patron saint.
The festivities commenced on July 27th with the coronation of the festival queen of the city, known as the Feria of Lagos de Moreno, and came to an end on August 13th following a fortnight of music, indulgence, rodeos, and bullfighting.
Genitallica Plastiko, a well-liked Latin rock group, held a performance on the evening of August 11, signaling the culmination of a lively weekend in full motion.
The individuals were last located at 10:55pm, and one of the group of five sent a text message to a relative to notify them of their departure.
According to sources informed to El Universal, the government controls the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which is a recognized affiliate of the individuals they organized to encounter.
The CJNG runs a series of call centers, where new cartel members use forced recruitment methods and are informed through paper sources by the federal government.
The call centers advertise false employment opportunities at fictitious companies, providing enticing salaries and favorable perks.
They are often sent to work on the most dangerous jobs in rival cartel-operated sites, where they are ordered to operate under the risk of being killed or to work for the cartel itself.
The majority of people recruited through the call centers come from the neighboring states of Jalisco, Michoacan, Colima, Nayarit, Guanajuato and Zacatecas.
David Saucedo Torres, a security expert, informed El Universal that the CNJG has created a network of these telephone centers.
In the past two years, centers for recruitment and training have emerged in various regions surrounding Moreno de Lagos.
‘They have established Lagos de Moreno as a crucial operational location, particularly for the recruitment and training of groups of assassins.’
Saucedo Torres stated that he believed the five individuals were caught up in the recruitment campaign of the cartel.
All indications suggest that the five young people who were kidnapped by the Cartel Jalisco have been caught in some sort of training program, which involves carrying out assassinations to recruit new recruits.
He said escapees told how new forced-recruits were made to kill someone to prove their courage, daring and loyalty to the cartel.
The security expert stated that, based on the recorded footage, one of the remaining individuals was compelled to murder one of the five as part of an initiation ritual.
‘However, at a certain juncture, things began to go awry, and the assassins made the decision to eliminate them all,’ he added.
Torres Saucedo expressed surprise at the leaked video, which was possibly published by an ally of the Sinaloa Cartel to bring attention to the CJNG, a target of the federal government.
He said there was no doubt the CJNG was the ‘material and intellectual author of the kidnap and assassination of the youngsters.’.
Moreno de Lagos is crucially important for the Cartel Jalisco as he continues to play a significant role in the capture and recruitment of new blood, thus maintaining their control over the Sinaloa region, he added.
A decade ago, in July 2013, six youthful individuals were captured under comparable conditions, and their corpses discovered a few days afterwards.
Prior to yesterday, the president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, maintained that he had not perceived the shouted inquiry and was charged on Thursday with neglecting a query regarding the national reaction to the homicides.
He stated that he had no need to express regret since he had not committed any wrongdoing.
Despite his anger, he gave little attention to the case on Thursday, saying that the killings were ‘very regrettable’ while spending more time discussing baseball for about a minute.
The independent governor of Jalisco, Enrique Alfaro, stated that it was clear that drug cartels were involved in the crime, and federal prosecutors should take control of the case.
‘What we are witnessing here is an action clearly associated with organized crime,’ Alfaro stated on his social media profiles.
He referred to the acts that threaten the state’s stability as the killings, as well as an attack in July, where a drug cartel triggered a synchronized sequence of roadway bombs in western Mexico, resulting in the death of four police officers and two civilians.
‘Alfaro stated that these direct and violent attacks against the stability of the state of Jalisco are irrational, and they demand a reaction from the federal government.’
Obrador Lopez has been criticized for not doing enough to take on the cartels, as the grim video took Mexicans back to the worst days of cartel violence, which were even more horrifying and public executions.
Mexico does not allow more than one term to serve as president – The 69-year-old will leave office at the end of his single six-year term next December.
The front-runner, who is the hand-picked successor of Claudia Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City, would be the first female president of Mexico.
Last month, Mexican President Lopez Obrador continued his antagonism towards the United States, questioning the estimates provided by the United States about the strength of Mexican drug cartels, which he believed lacked good information and raised concerns about security policy.
The remarks were prompted by a hearing in the U.S. Congress, where U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Chief Anne Milgram provided testimony on Mexican cartels.
Milgram testified that the CJNG and Sinaloa Cartel have over 45,000 members, associates, facilitators, and brokers in approximately 100 countries, according to the DEA’s estimation.
The DEA’s mapping is spread around the world and in 31 states of Mexico, respectively, showcasing how extensive their reach is.
‘No,’ the president said in response to a question from a journalist about if the information from the U.S. Official were true.
Said he, “it got DEA the from woman the where know don’t I.”Information that have don’t we. Information good have don’t they.
The resistance from Lopez Obrador is the most recent in continuing tensions between the Mexican government and the DEA.
Disbanding a specialized law enforcement team that collaborated closely with the DEA, President Lopez Obrador has condemned the existence of American security organizations within the nation and has implemented measures to weaken collaboration since assuming office in 2018.
The Mexican government dropped the case against Salvador Cienfuegos, the country’s former Defense Minister, who was accused by the DEA of conspiring with drug lords. Lopez Obrador accused the DEA of inventing the case.