Mexico’s Defense Department announced February 9, 2022, that Soldiers have rolled into a township dominated by the Jalisco cartel for the first time in months.
The Army sent what appeared to be hundreds of troops and trucks into the township of Aguililla, in western Michoacan state, on February 8. It is an area where the Jalisco cartel is fighting a bloody turf war with the local Viagras gang.
The troops broke up a civilian blockade of a small Army base in Aguililla that had blocked its entrances since last summer.
The Defense Department said the government was starting a “dialogue for the pacification of Aguililla” and “freeing the areas of organized crime presence” in Aguililla and other towns nearby. The department distributed photos of heaps of weapons, bulletproof vests and two homemade armored cars labeled with the initials of the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel.
People in the area raise limes and cattle, and the Viagras — also called the United Cartels — have imposed a “war tax” on outbound shipments of those products and on inbound supplies. That has helped force up the price of limes nationwide.
Protesters in Aguililla have demanded the Army open the roads and act with equal force against both cartels. The warring cartels have used trenches, sharpshooters and bombs dropped by drones in battling each other and have increasingly put civilians on the front lines of the fighting. (Pictured: Mexican Army vehicles patrol the Aguililla community in the state of Michoacan, Mexico, in April 2021. The Army recently returned to the area for the first time in nine months.)
In late January 2021, evidence emerged the gangs have also begun using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on roads to disable army vehicles.
The self-defense movement in the town of Tepalcatepec, near Aguililla, said improvised land mines severely damaged an Army armored car in early February. It would be the first time IEDs have been successfully used by cartels in Mexico.
A spokesman for the movement, which is battling the Jalisco cartel, supplied photos showing a disabled Army light-armored vehicle on a road with damage he said was caused by a mine. He said the explosion happened in the town of Taixtan, near Tepalcatepec, where locals have been battling Jalisco gunmen.
The Defense Department said Army patrols were attacked in the area four times with explosives, homemade armored cars and gunfire that wounded 10 Soldiers.
IMAGE CREDIT: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
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