Mexico: Drug war has led to 26,121 disappearances

Πηγή: CBSNews
Feb 26 2013

Mexico's new administration says an official count shows at least 26,121 people were reported missing during the term of former President Felipe Calderon, who launched the country's offensive against drug cartels.

Lia Limon, the Interior Department's subsecretary for human rights, says the list used data from local prosecutors across Mexico, and includes people reported missing for any reason during the previous administration. It doesn't include information collected after November 2012.

The list has been a subject of controversy in Mexico for weeks. After Limon said last week that some 27,000 were missing, a member of Calderon's administration disputed the figure, saying the only registry on disappeared people contains 5,319 names. Limon said the government would work to compare the official list with others assembled by government agencies and rights groups.

Just last week, a new Human Rights Watch report called Mexico's anti-drug offensive "disastrous" and cites 249 cases of disappearances, about 149 of which include evidence of being carried out by the military or law enforcement.

The report says the forced disappearances follow a pattern of security forces detaining people without warrants at checkpoints, homes, workplaces or in public. When families ask about their relatives, security forces deny the detentions or instruct them to look elsewhere.

"Virtually none of the victims have been found or those responsible brought to justice, exacerbating the suffering of families of the disappeared," Human Rights Watch said in a press release.

The report accused former President Felipe Calderon of ignoring the problem, calling it "the most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades."

Mexico's Interior Department oversees domestic security and it declined to make an immediate comment about the report.

The newspaper Reforma, one of several media outlets that count murders linked to organized crime, said that in December, the first month of the new government, there were 755 drug-related killings, compared to 699 in November. In Calderon's six-year term, some 70,000 people lost their lives to drug violence, the newspaper reported, with at least 20,000 believed missing.

It's difficult to say if drug violence has risen in Mexico under the new regime of President Enrique Pena Nieto, because the government no longer provides numbers, something that started under Calderon, who last released drug-war death statistics in September 2011.

2 powerful cartels dominate in Mexico drug war

Πηγή: AP
By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO and KATHERINE CORCORAN

Oct 1 2011

VERACRUZ, Mexico (AP) -- Five years after President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against Mexico's five main drug cartels, the nation is now dominated by two powerful organizations that appear poised for a one-on-one battle to control drug markets and trafficking routes.

The government's success in killing or arresting some cartel leaders has fractured most of the other gangs to such an extent that they have devolved into quarreling bands, or been forced to operate as subsidiaries of the two main cartels. That has often meant expanded territory and business opportunities for the hyper-violent Zetas and drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's Sinaloa cartel.

"They are the two most successful cartels, or at least they have been able to expand in recent years," said drug trade and security expert Jorge Chabat.

Mexican federal authorities, who asked not to be named for security reasons, told The Associated Press that the Zeta and Sinaloa cartels are now the nation's two dominant drug traffickers. One or the other is present almost everywhere in Mexico, but officials are braced to see what happens next in a drug war that has already claimed an estimated 35,000 to 40,000 lives. So far, the signs are not hopeful.

In the Gulf coast seaport of Veracruz, 35 bound, tortured bodies were dumped onto a main thoroughfare during the height of rush hour on Sept. 20. The killers are presumed to be aligned with the Sinaloa cartel, while the victims were apparently linked to the Zetas, who took hold of the important seaport in 2010. In a clash in May, more than two dozen people, most of them Zetas, were killed when they tried to infiltrate the Sinaloa's territory in the Pacific Coast state of Nayarit.

When Calderon took office in December 2006, he said the drug cartels were trying to take over the country. He launched the government's first broad attempt to fight the gangs, deploying thousands of soldiers to capture cartel members and dismantle the organizations.

At the time, the Zetas were not even a separate cartel, but rather an armed enforcement wing of the Gulf cartel, a role created in the late 1990s when they were recruited from an elite army unit. Sometime around 2010, after a falling-out between Gulf and Zeta gunmen, the Zetas split off, ushering in what is possibly the bloodiest chapter of Mexico's narco wars. Within less than two years, the Zetas had taken control of the seaport and most of the Gulf's former territory.

According to Chabat, the two have survived the government crackdown because they have been more skilled than their weaker counterparts. He said the new alignment may make it easier for government forces to target the two big cartels, as opposed to fighting half a dozen of them.

"The question is whether the Sinaloa cartel and Zetas are going to break at some point or not," said Chabat.

"Right now they are very strong, but if in two or three years these cartels are pulverized, they may say that (the drug war) was a success."

Both the "mega" cartels want to control seaports for shipping drugs from South and Central America, and border towns, for getting the drugs into the United States.

Sinaloa has long been based on the country's northwest Pacific coast, with occasional incursions farther east along the border. In recent years, it has spread both east and south, reaching into Central America.

The Zetas, once confined to a stretch of the northern Gulf coast, have grown the most, pushing into central Mexico, and as far south as Guatemala.

Strategies differ. While the Sinaloa cartel is known for forging temporary alliances, officials have said the Zetas are believed to scorn them, preferring direct control of territory. There appears little chance the two groups will ever agree to split their turf; instead, Mexico may be headed into a battle between the two cartels, with each seeking to exterminate the other.

"I see the Sinaloa Federation and the Zetas as being the two polarizing forces in the Mexican criminal system ... and between the two, an array of other smaller groups aligned with one or the other, " said Samuel Logan, director of Southern Pulse, a security consulting firm.

Their operations differ too. The Zetas are involved in human trafficking and other illegal businesses, as well as the drug trade. They have committed some of the worst massacres in the Mexican drug wars and engage in a violence so brutal authorities have called the cartel "irrational." The Sinaloan hit men, on the other hand, appear to be more focused on the drug business and are less randomly violent.

Zetas often dress in fake military gear, and have erected military-style training camps. Sinaloa gunmen, like other narcotics gangs, are more discreet, favoring ski masks and black clothing.

"Sinaloa has done well by flying under the radar. They're comparatively less violent, though they're no saints," said Andrew Selee, director of the Washington-based Mexico Institute. "The Zetas have certainly gotten bigger since they split with the Gulf, but whether that will amount to a long-term ability to control and defend the territories where they have a presence is a little less clear.

"In reality, they're much thinner, where Sinaloa is hierarchical and compact."

Both the big cartels have also been known to launch "spoiler" attacks, aimed at making trouble on an opponent's turf, even though they have little chance of truly encroaching on it. They have sometimes even launched "poison" attacks on civilians on an opponent's turf, hoping the rival will be blamed.

In between the two giants, smaller, fragmented remains of vanquished cartels fight their own bloody battles.

On the outskirts of Mexico City, the Knights Templar cartel appears to be fighting remnants of the Beltran-Leyva gang, and the same two forces - plus the Zetas - have been battling for Acapulco, terrorizing the Pacific coast resort.

Battles among various cartels proliferate in Mexico's most violent cities, including Monterrey, where the Gulf cartel is fighting the Zetas.

But Selee notes that the Veracruz fighting may represent a new stage in which the two big gangs take each other head-on as they move deeper into each other's territory. The battle may have opened in May, when the Zetas apparently sent a convoy of fighters into Sinaloa territory in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit.

For all of the Zetas' bloody reputation - they have been known to massacre the families of police or soldiers who had already died fighting them - the incursion didn't go well: Twenty-eight presumed Zetas were found slaughtered by the side of a highway.

Soon after, in July, a group of two dozen armed men posted a video on the Internet, identifying themselves as "Mata Zetas" - literally, "Zeta Killers" - and said they were from a group allied with Sinaloa to hunt Zetas.

A Mexican military official who could not be quoted by name for security reasons said that besides the tit-for-tat aspect of the Veracruz killings, Sinaloa may also want control of the port as a link in the shipping route from Central America.

But Logan sees another reason for a group aligned with Sinaloa to attack deep into Zeta territory in Veracruz - to distract the Zetas from their next target: Guadalajara.

Mexico's second-largest city also has seen a rise in drug violence in the past year. It was long the home of Sinaloa's methamphetamine-trafficking arm run by Guzman lieutenant Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel, who was killed in a shootout with federal police in July 2010. Since then, factions of Coronel's operation have been fighting for control, including the New Generation and another group known as the Resistance.

The Zetas have taken over neighboring Zacatecas state in their push west, and are eyeing Guadalajara both for the meth trade and for extortion potential.

"The Zetas aren't good for business. They do what they have to because they don't have the distribution networks of the Gulf or Sinaloa. So they have to diversify into kidnapping and extortion," said a U.S. law enforcement official in Mexico, who couldn't be identified for security reasons.

Logan said there are rumors that some factions fighting the New Generation are ready to join with the Zetas.

"That's got to concern El Chapo," he said, of the Sinaloan leader. "Guadalajara has been a huge part of the meth trade for years, El Chapo's bread and butter. If the Zetas take that, it won't be good for El Chapo."

Both big cartels are trying to cover their actions with public relations campaigns, as is now customary. The Zetas hung banners in several Veracruz towns, accusing the military of rights abuses and favoring Sinaloa.

The Mata Zetas have come out with another video, in which they claim to have moved into Veracruz to protect the public from Zeta kidnappings and extortion. The men's demeanor and language evoked a military style more than that of a gang foot soldier, raising a specter of a paramilitary response.

"We are the armed wing of the people, and for the people," says a man with a ski mask, who is seen in the video sitting at a table reading from a prepared statement. He is flanked by four other masked associates, each with a full water bottle placed on the tablecloth. "We are anonymous warriors, faceless, but proudly Mexican."

The Buffer Between Mexican Cartels and the U.S. Government

Πηγή: Stratfor
By Scott Stewart
August 17, 2011, 1913 GMT


It is summer in Juarez, and again this year we find the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization (VCF), also known as the Juarez cartel, under pressure and making threats. At this time in 2010, La Linea, the VCF’s enforcer arm, detonated a small improvised explosive device (IED) inside a car in Juarez and killed two federal agents, one municipal police officer and an emergency medical technician and wounded nine other people. La Linea threatened to employ a far larger IED (100 kilograms) if the FBI and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) did not investigate the head of Chihuahua State Police intelligence, whom the VCF claimed was working for the Sinaloa Federation.
La Linea did attempt to employ another IED on Sept. 10, 2010, but this device, which failed to detonate, contained only 16 kilograms of explosives, far less than the 100 kilograms that the group had threatened to use.
Fast-forward a year, and we see the VCF still under unrelenting pressure from the Sinaloa Federation and still making threats. On July 15, the U.S. Consulate in Juarez released a message warning that, according to intelligence it had in hand, a cartel may be targeting the consulate or points of entry into the United States. On July 27, “narcomantas” — banners inscribed with messages from drug cartels — appeared in Juarez and Chihuahua signed by La Linea and including explicit threats against the DEA and employees of the U.S. Consulate in Juarez. Two days after the narcomantas appeared, Jose Antonio “El Diego” Acosta Hernandez, a senior La Linea leader whose name was mentioned in the messages, was arrested by Mexican authorities aided by intelligence from the U.S. government. Acosta is also believed to have been responsible for planning La Linea’s past IED attacks.
As we have discussed in our coverage of the drug war in Mexico, Mexican cartels, including the VCF, clearly possess the capability to construct and employ large vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) — truck bombs — and yet they have chosen not to. These groups are not averse to bloodshed, or even outright barbarity, when they believe it is useful. Their decision to abstain from certain activities, such as employing truck bombs or targeting a U.S. Consulate, indicates that there must be compelling strategic reasons for doing so. After all, groups in Lebanon, Pakistan and Iraq have demonstrated that truck bombs are a very effective means of killing perceived enemies and of sending strong messages.
Perhaps the most compelling reason for the Mexican cartels to abstain from such activities is that they do not consider them to be in their best interest. One important part of their calculation is that such activities would remove the main buffer that is currently insulating them from the full force of the U.S. government: the Mexican government.

The Buffer

Despite their public manifestations of machismo, the cartel leaders clearly fear and respect the strength of the world’s only superpower. This is evidenced by the distinct change in cartel activities along the U.S.-Mexico border, where a certain operational downshift routinely occurs. In Mexico, the cartels have the freedom to operate far more brazenly than they can in the United States, in terms of both drug trafficking and acts of violence. Shipments of narcotics traveling through Mexico tend to be far larger than shipments moving into and through the United States. When these large shipments reach the border they are taken to stash houses on the Mexican side, where they are typically divided into smaller quantities for transport into and through the United States.
As for violence, while the cartels do kill people on the U.S. side of the border, their use of violence there tends to be far more discreet; it has certainly not yet incorporated the dramatic flair that is frequently seen on the Mexican side, where bodies are often dismembered or hung from pedestrian bridges over major thoroughfares. The cartels are also careful not to assassinate high-profile public figures such as police chiefs, mayors and reporters in the United States, as they frequently do in Mexico.
The border does more than just alter the activities of the cartels, however. It also constrains the activities of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies. These agencies cannot pursue cartels on the Mexican side of the border with the same vigor that they exercise on the U.S. side. Occasionally, the U.S. government will succeed in luring a wanted Mexican cartel leader outside of Mexico, as it did in the August 2006 arrest of Javier Arellano Felix, or catch one operating in the United States like Javier’s oldest brother, Francisco Arellano Felix. By and large, however, most wanted cartel figures remain in Mexico, out of the reach of U.S. law.
One facet of this buffer is corruption, which is endemic in Mexico, reaching all the way from the lowest municipal police officer to the presidential palace. Over the years several senior Mexican anti-drug officials, including the nation’s drug czar, have been arrested and charged with corruption.
However, the money generated by the Mexican cartels has far greater effects than just promoting corruption. The billions of dollars that come into the Mexican economy via the drug trade are important to the Mexican banking sector and to the industries in which the funds are laundered, such as construction. Because of this, there are many powerful Mexican businessmen who profit either directly or indirectly from the narcotics trade, and it would not be in their best interest for the billions of drug dollars to stop flowing into Mexico. Such people can place heavy pressure on the political system by either supporting or withholding support from particular candidates or parties.
Because of this, sources in Mexico have been telling STRATFOR that they believe that Mexican politicians like President Filipe Calderon are far more interested in stopping drug violence than they are in stopping the flow of narcotics. This is a pragmatic approach. Clearly, as long as there is demand for drugs in the United States there will be people who will find ways to meet that demand. It is impossible to totally stop the flow of narcotics into the U.S. market.
In addition to corruption and the economic benefits Mexico realizes from the drug trade, there is another important element that causes the Mexican government to act as a buffer between the Mexican cartels and the U.S. government — geopolitics. The Mexico-U.S. relationship is a long one that has involved considerable competition and conflict. The United States has long meddled in the affairs of Mexico and other countries in Latin America. And from the Mexican perspective, American imperialist aggression, via the Texas War of Independence and the Mexican-American War, resulted in Mexico losing nearly half of its territory to its powerful northern neighbor. Less than a century ago, U.S. troops invaded northern Mexico in response to Pancho Villa’s incursions into the United States.
Because of this history, Mexico — as with most of the rest of Latin America — regards the United States as a threat to its sovereignty. The result of this perception is that the Mexican government and the Mexican people in general are very reluctant to allow the United States to become too involved in Mexican affairs. The idea of American troops or law enforcement agents with boots on the ground in Mexico is considered especially threatening from the Mexican perspective.

A Thin Barrier

While Mexican sovereignty and international law combine with corruption and economics to create a barrier to assertive U.S. intervention in Mexico’s drug war, this barrier is not inviolable. There are two distinct ways this type of barrier has been breached in the past: by force and by consent.
An example of the first was seen following the 1985 kidnapping, torture and murder of U.S. DEA special agent Enrique Camarena. The DEA was not able to get what it viewed as satisfactory assistance from the Mexican government in pursuing the case despite the tremendous pressure applied by the U.S. government. This prompted the DEA to unilaterally enter Mexico and snatch two Mexican citizens connected to the case. Because of his involvement in the Camarena case, Honduran drug kingpin Juan Matta-Ballesteros was also rendered from his home in Honduras by U.S. government agents.
As a result of the U.S. reaction to the Camarena murder, the Guadalajara Cartel, Mexico’s most powerful criminal organization at the time, was decapitated, its leaders — Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Rafael Caro Quintero — all arrested and convicted for their part in ordering the killing. The tremendous pressure applied to Mexican authorities by the U.S. government to arrest the trio, coupled with the fear that they too might be rendered, ultimately led to their detention, although they did maintain sufficient influence to ensure that they were not extradited to the United States.
The Guadalajara Cartel also lost its primary connection to the Medellin cartel (Matta-Ballesteros) as a result of the Camarena case, and the cartel was eventually fractured into smaller units that would become today’s Sinaloa, Juarez, Gulf and Tijuana cartels. The Camarena case taught the Mexican cartel bosses to be careful not to provoke the Americans to the point where it will bring the full power of the U.S. government to bear upon their organizations (a lesson recently demonstrated by the unilateral U.S. operation to kill Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan).
But in addition to unilateral force, sometimes the U.S. government can be invited into a country despite concerns about sovereignty. This happens when the population has something it fears more than U.S. involvement, and this is what happened in Colombia in the late 1980s. In an effort to influence the Colombian government not to cooperate with the U.S. government and extradite him to the United States, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, leader of the Medellin Cartel, resorted to terrorism. In 1989 he launched a string of terrorist attacks that included the assassination of one presidential candidate, the bombing a civilian airliner in an attempt to kill a second presidential candidate and several large VBIED attacks, including the detonation of a 1,000-pound truck bomb in December 1989 targeting the Colombian Administrative Department of Security (DAS, Colombia’s primary national intelligence and security service) that caused massive damage in the area around the DAS building in downtown Bogota. These attacks had a powerful impact on the Colombian government and Colombian people and caused them to reach out to the United States for increased assistance despite their concern about U.S. power. The increased U.S. assistance eventually led to the death of Escobar and the systematic dismantling of his organization.
The lesson in the Escobar case was: Do not push your own government or population too far or they will turn on you and invite the Americans in.

Rights Groups Contend Mexican Military Has Heavy Hand in Drug Cases

Tomas Bravo/Reuters

State police officers patrolling in Monterrey in June during a drug search involving hundreds of police and military personnel.

Πηγή: New York Times

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: August 2, 2011

MONTERREY, Mexico — The marines barged in at dawn and grabbed her 27-year-old son, dragging him away with a look of fear frozen on his face, Maria del Socorro Maldonado said. He was rushed out clad only in orange shorts.



René Jasso Maldonado has been missing since a June 28 raid.


“I asked if I could give him some clothes, flip-flops, a shirt, and they just took him,” she said, still in shock as she recounted the June 28 raid at her home near here.

She has not seen him since. The marines, increasingly used as part of a military saturation of the area to fight drug gangs, say they do not have her son, René Jasso Maldonado, while the local police keep telling the family to check with the marines. Where he is, or even who took him, remains a mystery.

Mr. Jasso’s relatives believe he fell under suspicion because he is a taxi driver, many of whom are gang lookouts. But they insist he had no involvement in crime and have filed complaints with every authority they can think of — even sending a letter to the president — as they confront the kind of a bureaucratic black hole that human rights activists and international organizations contend is all too common.

The widespread use of the military to back up the local police, who often lack the capability or willingness to take on drug organizations, has led to the capture or killing of dozens of people suspected of participation in organized crime. But cases like that of Mr. Jasso, with their mix of suspicion, fear and unanswered questions, show the darker side of the strategy, human rights groups say.

Like the police, the military has been accused of acting with impunity, getting rebukes by the United States, international organizations and human rights advocates. Last year, the United States withheld part of its drug enforcement aid out of concerns over police and military abuse, and in April, a United Nations panel urged Mexico to consider withdrawing its use of the military because of complaints about “involuntary disappearances.”

The most recent, and possibly farthest-reaching, effort to bring accountability to the military, however, has come out of Mexico itself: a Mexican Supreme Court decision last month that may help lift the lid on the thousands of complaints against the military about disappearances, torture and other abuse.

The court, concurring with a ruling by an international court, said rights cases against the military belonged in civilian courts, not in military tribunals where wrongdoers are rarely punished.

The decision raises the prospect of more transparent civilian investigations into the cases, said Nik Steinberg, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, which has been tracking military cases. But military leaders declared afterward that they could not operate without some protection from prosecution, and several lawmakers came out to support them.

The ruling stemmed from a 1974 case, pressed for years in national and international courts by the family of Rosendo Radilla Pacheco, an advocate for health and education in a poor area of the southern state of Guerrero, who disappeared after being stopped at a military checkpoint. At the time, Mexico and other Latin American countries were taking a hard line on perceived leftist agitators.

Typically, civilian authorities defer to the military, a powerful institution with the trust and a mandate from President Felipe Calderón to take on the cartels while the police and other law enforcement institutions are built up.

Up to 45,000 troops have been sent to several states to assist, and sometimes take over for, civilian forces — the most boots on the ground in highly populated areas since the Mexican Revolution, said David Shirk, principal investigator for the Justice in Mexico project at the University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute.

“The Mexican military has experienced a dramatic and sustained mission creep from the 1940s to the present,” Mr. Shirk said. “Its role has shifted from eradicating drug crops in remote rural areas to its current urban deployments to restore order and reclaim lost spaces in Mexico’s largest cities.”

But as complaints of human rights abuses rise, Mexico has grappled with how, or even whether, to police the military.

The National Human Rights Commission said it has logged more than 5,000 complaints of abuse at the hands of the military, chiefly the army. In addition, it has said, more than 5,300 people have been missing since Mr. Calderón began his offensive against organized crime in 2006.

Under international pressure to curb the use of torture and arbitrary detentions, Mr. Calderón proposed to Congress late last year that allegations of rape, kidnapping and torture against the military be heard in civilian courts. Murder was left off the list, to the dismay of human rights advocates, and the bill has not advanced.


The State Department last year withheld part its counternarcotics military aid over human rights concerns. The money, $26 million under the $1.4 billion Merida Initiative, still has not been delivered, though the court’s decision on July 12 could help persuade lawmakers to release it, State Department officials said.

But several analysts questioned whether the civilian justice system was prepared to take on such cases.

“Mexico’s civilian courts have proved woefully ineffective,” Mr. Shirk said. “If military human rights violators find the same degree of impunity we see for other criminal actors, then their victims will have little justice and this decision will have little real meaning.”

Military leaders have long expressed skepticism over the complaints, arguing that most are unfounded or the work of cartels manipulating human rights and international organizations with false accusations to tarnish their name.

Just last week, the secretary of the navy, Adm. Mariano Francisco Saynez, said as much at a graduation ceremony for cadets.

“By using the banner of human rights, they try to damage the image of our institutions with the malevolent goal of obstructing their participation in the fight against them and having an open field for their evil doing,” Admiral Saynez said.

Still, he added, the marines “do not tolerate or protect those who by mistake or lack of professionalism violate human rights.” Both the navy and the army say they now incorporate human rights awareness into their training.

The use of the military against the drug organizations remains highly popular in Mexico, though a number of cases here in Monterrey and surrounding Nuevo Leon State have raised alarms. Several people who the authorities later acknowledged were innocent victims have been wounded or killed at checkpoints or in military operations, in some cases with soldiers accused of manipulating crime scenes to cover their tracks.

But among the more worrisome cases, human rights advocates said, are the disappearance of people, typically young men, last seen in the custody of or near military units. In Tamaulipas State, which borders Nuevo Leon, Amnesty International in June said witnesses reported four men being picked up by marines and not heard from again, with the marines denying any involvement.

“Whether they were suspects or taken by mistake is often hard to know because nobody claims to have answers,” said Sister Consuelo Morales Elizondo, director of Citizens in Support of Human Rights in Monterrey. Confusing matters further, cartel hitmen often disguise themselves as police or soldiers, using fake equipment and sometimes authentic gear stolen or procured from allies in the agencies. That has allowed the authorities to dismiss many disappearances as the work of “clones.”

The marines told Mr. Jasso’s family that it had not been operating in the area and suggested it might have been a gang in military disguise.

But his brother, Oziel, doubted that. He works as a toll taker on a federal highway and said he sees military convoys all the time, readily recognizing their insignia and manner.

One officer during the raid kept accusing him of being a “hawk,” slang for a cartel lookout, before deciding he was not involved and moving on to find his brother.

“If it was a cartel, I would not be sitting here talking to you,” he said. “They would have wiped out the witnesses.”

A few days after the raid, René Jasso Maldonado’s close friend and fellow taxi driver, Jesus Llano Muñoz, 22, was detained at a military checkpoint, according to witnesses, and has not been heard from since.

Mr. Llano’s family members said they believed rival drivers spread false information about Mr. Jasso and Mr. Llano among the marines and soldiers in an effort to eliminate competition.

“All we want to know is where he is,” Oziel Jasso Maldonado said.