7 Community Guards Killed by Drug Cartel Members in Mexico, 7 Others Kidnapped and Taken Through “Hell”

Mexico’s traditional and indigenous community police are increasingly being targeted by drug cartels, authorities said Monday.

Adrián López, the chief prosecutor in the western state Michoacánconfirmed that gunmen linked to drug cartels shot dead seven members of the local police in the city of Coahuayana over the weekend.

The community guards were killed days after seven members of an indigenous community police force were kidnapped, allegedly by cartel members, and sent through “hell” in another city in Michoacan before being released on Friday.

As the cartel wars ravage rural Mexican cities, many places have turned to “community police,” relatively untrained members of the community who volunteer or pay a small fee to protect residents.

Community policing is more common in indigenous towns, which have centuries of experience organizing and defending themselves. The police are a more established and reliable force than the short-lived “self-defense” units that emerged in Michoacan between 2013 and 2014 to fight the cartels but quickly became corrupt.

But while they enjoy the trust of their fellow citizens, the community guards are no match for the firepower of the cartels seeking to take over their land.

According to López, the prosecutor, Saturday’s attack in Coahuayana was linked to fighting between drug cartels over control of the coastal area, a major maritime cocaine supply route.

“All this has to do with the decision of members of criminal gangs to conquer territory and carry out illegal activities, mainly drug trafficking,” he said.

Coahuayana (koh-why-YAH-nah), located on the Pacific coast near the neighboring state of Colima, is particularly attractive to the cartels. Fast boats carrying cocaine from South America sail directly here, but often dump floating bales of cocaine at sea, equipped with tracking devices, before picking them up and bringing them to land.

“The area of ​​the coast of Michoacan and Colima is ideal for picking up packages of cocaine from South America,” said López. “There have been numerous packages of cocaine seized by the Navy.”

Although no one in Coahuayana would say which gang committed the killings, suspicions immediately turned to the Jalisco New Generation cartel, which has long been active in the region.

“It was hell there”

The cartel is also suspected of being responsible for the kidnapping of seven community guards — six men and one woman — who were abducted last Tuesday and released Friday in the indigenous Purepecha neighborhood of Tangamandapio (tahn-gah-man-DAH-pee-oh) Michoacan.

These traditional officers are known as “Kuárichas” (KWAH-rich-ahs) in Purepecha. In indigenous towns, such troops have legal status to deal with minor infractions.

The seven were kidnapped on Tuesday and a massive search was launched involving helicopters, the army and state police. No one would say who had kidnapped them or what had happened to them, but suspicion fell once again on the Jalisco cartel, based in the neighboring state of the same name.

One of the officers, Brayan Javier, said after his release: “The truth is that it was hell there, because of the many things that happened.”

Another rescued guard, Luis Reyes, said their release was due to the unity and strength of the Purepecha community that helped in the search.

“Thanks to the whole city and all the Purepecha people, we are strong,” Reyes said.

Reyes and the others are confident that the indigenous people’s resilience and community ties can ward off the cartels, but that’s not yet clear.

In recent months, the southern state of Chiapas, one of Mexico’s most indigenous-populated areas, has largely fallen under the control of warring drug gangs near the Guatemalan border, prompting some Chiapas residents to surrender and flee to neighboring Guatemala.

Jalisco cartel also targets Americans

The Jalisco New Generation cartel also targets American citizens. Last month, the US imposes sanctions about a group of Mexican accountants and companies allegedly linked to a timeshare fraud a multimillion-dollar cartel-run gang targeting Americans.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is hunting fraudsters who used call centers controlled by the Jalisco drug cartel to defraud at least 600 Americans of about $40 million, officials said.

They also began contacting people posing as OFAC employees themselves, offering to release funds supposedly frozen by the U.S. agency, which combats illicit money and money laundering.

OFAC in November announced new sanctions against three Mexican citizens and 13 companies with alleged ties to the Jalisco Cartel, better known by its Spanish acronym CJNG, which has murdered call center workers who tried to resign.