Roberto Saviano - ZeroZeroZero

For some he was El Chayo, for others El Más Loco, the Craziest One. But everyone remembers him as the Mexican boss who died twice. In December 2010, the Mexican authorities declared that the boss of The Michoacán Family had been killed by the Federal Police of Apatzingán. Even the then president, Felipe Calderón, went out of his way to explain that the forces of order had surprised Nazario Moreno González during a party organized by some La Familia members, and that he had been killed during the ensuing shoot-out. His body was never found, but no one doubted the official version: It had been taken away by La Familia members. Not until October 2011, that is, almost a year later, when Mario Buenrostro Quiroz, the leader of Los Aboytes, a group of kidnappers with ties to The Michoacán Family, was arrested. Under interrogation Buenrostro revealed that El Chayo was alive and had become the head of the Knights Templar cartel, which had broken away from The Michoacán Family. Rumors started flying. Confirmation came on March 9, 2014, when marine and army special forces killed a man who had forcefully resisted arrest during a shootout in Tumbiscatío, Michoacán. Fingerprints and a DNA test left no room for doubt this time: It was Nazario Moreno González, who had officially been dead for more than three years. During those dead years he’d been able to command undisturbed from his stronghold in Michoacán, without even having to worry about being arrested: No one hunts down a dead man.

Michoacán is on the Pacific coast. This was where the Sinaloa gomeros had moved with their opium poppies, and they were the ones who taught the campesinos how to cultivate them. Michoacán-Sinaloa-United States: For years this was the route.

The Michoacán Family claimed to be born to oppose violence and protect and defend the weak. For several years the Gulf cartel, which was expanding in those areas, relied on La Familia for paramilitary support. But La Familia ultimately became an independent cartel specializing in methamphetamine trafficking, and it became the principal supplier of meth for the United States. This area, with its hills — a natural refuge — and Pacific shoreline — that facilitates transportation — and above all with the vast stretches of fertile terrain in the so-called Tierra Caliente, or Hot Land — perfect for growing marijuana — has attracted traffickers for decades. But today it is dotted with meth labs. According to Michael Braun, former DEA chief of operations, La Familia has specialized laboratories that can produce up to 50 kilos of methamphetamine in eight hours. La Familia also has very strict rules about selling it: never to its own members; never to Mexicans. The cartel hangs banners in its territories: “We are against the use of drugs and we say no to the exploitation of women and children.”

La Familia cartel celebrated its entry into the world of Mexican drug trafficking in high style: On the night of September 6, 2006, twenty men dressed in black, their faces covered with ski masks, burst into the discotheque Sol y Sombra in Uruapan, some sixty miles from Morelia, the capital of Michoacán. Armed to the teeth, they fired into the air and shouted at the public and the girls dancing on cubes to get down on the floor. Amid general panic, they raced up to the second level, opened black plastic trash bags, and rolled five decapitated heads across the dance floor. On their way out the hit men left a note on the floor, next to the severed heads: “La Familia doesn’t kill for money, it doesn’t kill women, it doesn’t kill innocent people. The only ones who die are those who deserve it. Let it be known by all: this is divine justice.” The Michoacán Family had introduced itself to Mexico.

The organization’s members view their territory as sacred and will not tolerate it being sullied by drugs or disease. This makes them quite similar to Italian mafias, which stop and punish whoever deals in their territory. The Michoacán Family has a sui generis welfare system. They fight drug addiction in an unusual, martial fashion: They go to the rehab clinics and encourage the addicts to come clean in every way possible, including through the help of prayer. Then they make them work for the cartel. If they refuse, they are killed. Prayer meetings play an important role in the organization; one’s career depends on them. The cartel lavishes money on peasants, businesses, schools, and churches, and it promotes itself in the local papers in order to gain public support. In an ad in La Voz de Michoacán in November 2006, La Familia announced: “Our strategies may be aggressive at times, but this is the only way to impose order in the state. Some people might not understand our actions right now, but we know that in the hardest hit zones they do, because it is possible to fight these delinquents, who have come here from other states, and we’re not going to let them come to Michoacán and commit crimes.” La Familia is like a parallel state within the state of Michoacán. It finances community projects, controls petty crime, resolves local disputes. And it demands protection money from businesses: a hundred pesos a month for a stall at the local market; thirty thousand for a car dealership. Businesses are often forced to close and turn operations over to the organization, which then uses them for money laundering.

“We want President Felipe Calderón to know that we are not his enemies, that we admire him. We are open to dialogue. We do not want Los Zetas in Michoacán. What we want is peace and tranquillity. We know we are a necessary evil…. We want to reach an agreement, we want to establish a national pact.” This was the voice of Servando Gómez Martínez, alias La Tuta, speaking in a phone call to the show Voz y Solución , hosted by the journalist Marcos Knapp on a local channel of Michoacán CB Televisión. Gómez, a high-ranking member of the cartel and one of Moreno González’s associates, was proposing nothing less than an alliance with President Calderón to eliminate their most feared competitors, but the government refused to negotiate. Nevertheless, La Familia has been one of the fastest-growing cartels during the years of Mexico’s war on drugs. Its power has spread from Michoacán to the neighboring states of Guerrero, Queretaro, and México. And also into the United States: In October 2009, federal authorities released the findings of a four-year investigation — known as Project Coronado — on La Familia’s activities in the United States. It led to one of the biggest operations against Mexican drug cartels operating in U.S. territory. More than three thousand agents took part in just one raid, which lasted two days and involved local, state, and federal authorities: 303 men were arrested in nineteen different U.S. states; 62 kilos of cocaine, 330 kilos of methamphetamine, 440 kilos of marijuana, 144 weapons, 109 vehicles, and 2 drug labs were seized, along with $3.4 million in cash. In November 2010 La Familia proposed another pact: It offered to dismantle its own cartel on the condition that the state, the federal government, and the federal police guarantee Michoacán’s security. The proposal appeared on flyers slipped under the doors of homes and shops, in phone booths, on cartel banners hung across streets, in letters sent to blogs, radio stations, newspapers, and national and international press agencies. It claimed that La Familia was created to make up for the government’s failure to provide for the safety of its citizens, and that it was composed of Michoacán men and women who were prepared to give their lives to defend the state. But once again Felipe Calderón, who was born in Michoacán, refused to negotiate with the cartel.

The conflict between La Familia and Los Zetas reduced Michoacán to a war zone. What is considered to be the first act of narco-terrorism in Mexican history took place in Morelia, Michoacán’s capital city, on September 15, 2008, the eve of Mexico’s Independence Day. Shortly after Governor Leonel Godoy rang the Independence bell and declared three times “ ¡Viva Mexico! ” two frag grenades exploded in the crowded square, killing eight people and wounding over a hundred, all of them innocent civilians. Even the innocent are victims in the narcos’ war. The authorities pointed a finger at La Familia, which in turn hung banners blaming Los Zetas: “‘Coward’ is the correct term for those who undermine the peace and tranquillity of the country. Mexico and Michoacán are not alone. Thank you, Zetas, for your contemptible acts.”