Mexico drug lord captures change but don't lower trafficking

Servando "La Tuta" Gomez (R) boards a helicopter during a media conference about his arrest in Mexico City February 27, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

"We are advancing, we are responding, we are having major apprehensions of the most wanted, most dangerous criminals,'' Pena Nieto said Friday, congratulating and thanking the federal forces that helped apprehend Gomez. "Overall, we continue to work toward a Mexico of peace that we all want.''

But the arrests, even those hitting the powerful and international Sinaloa Cartel, seem to have had little effect on the flow of drugs. Seizures at the US-Mexico border have fluctuated since 2010, when 2.7 million pounds were seized, to a high of 3.1 million in 2011 and down to 2.3 million pounds in 2014, according to US government figures, the only way to estimate flows of drugs.

"It's a dangerous proposition to suggest Knights Templar is dismantled,'' said David Shirk, associate political science professor at the University of San Diego. "It may take six months or a year, but this is a group of illegal actors that has staying power. Their roots go back to `80s and `90s. They just had different stages. The names change and the leaders change, but the problems in many ways persist.''

Indeed, the Knights Templar grew out of the La Familia cartel, where Gomez started out transporting marijuana before becoming a top leader about a decade ago. The cartel initially portrayed itself as a crusader gang, protecting communities from the Zetas cartel. Witnesses said La Familia trained its recruits in ultra-violent techniques like beheading and dismembering victims, and it frequently ambushed soldiers and federal police.

The government hit La Familia hard, starting in the administration of President Felipe Calderon in late 2006. Officials declared the cartel beaten in 2010 after allegedly killing its leader, Nazario Moreno. But La Familia fled to the neighboring states of Guerrero and Mexico, where it now fights other regional gangs for control of the lucrative and growing heroin trade.

Moreno, who actually hadn't died, then started Knights Templar with Gomez and took an even stronger hold on Michoacan. After Moreno was finally killed last year and Gomez going on the run, the Knights Templar too is now operating in Guerrero, at least in the city of Ciudad Altamirano, extorting protection payments from small business owners.

The brother of one pharmacy manager, who insisted on not being quoted by name out fear of reprisals, said all the stores in town were paying annual "quotas'' ranging from 5,000 pesos ($335) to 30,000 pesos ($2,000) for the right to operate. They were threatened with violence, kidnapping or the burning of their stores if they didn't pay.

"I have the impression that this is another detention of no judicial consequence,'' Edgardo Buscaglia, a cartel expert and senior scholar at Columbia University, said of Gomez's arrest. "It's only meant to reorder the map to reach a Mafioso kind of peace outside the justice system to improve the image of the administration of Enrique Pena Nieto.''

In Morelia, newspaper vehicles rolled through the streets with loudspeakers announcing a special edition about Gomez's arrest.

"It's very good news that they have detained La Tuta, but I don't know if it will solve Michoacan's problems,'' said Jesus Osorio, a taxi driver. "There will still be crime.''