A heavily armed commando under the orders of a drug cartel ambushed a convoy of state police pick-ups Monday afternoon near the village of Soyatan on the Mascota-Puerto Vallarta highway, causing the deaths of 15 officers – 14 men and one woman.
According to State Public Security Commissioner Alejandro Solorio, “a significant number of assailants” blocked the path of the convoy before surrounding the police officers and firing on them with high-calibre weapons.
Five officers survived the attack and are hospitalized with injuries of varying degrees.
The officers, part of Jalisco’s elite Fuerza Unica Regional (FUR) first-response unit, had little time to react to the ambush, noted a police department bulletin issued a few hours after the attack.
In a later press conference, Solorio described the ambush as “cowardly,” stressing that “now is not the time (for the state) to let down its guard.”
Law enforcement officials have been the targets of four attacks in Jalisco in the past month, including an ambush on March 19 that killed five federal officers in Ocotlan. On the same day as the incident on the Vallarta highway, gunmen kidnapped and murdered the police commander of Zacoalco de las Torres, Miguel Angel Caicedo Vargas. His body was discovered Monday evening together with a threatening note directed at Jalisco authorities.
Solorio acknowledged that both attacks were carried out by the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) in response to the death of Heriberto Acevedo Cardenas (“El Gringo”), who was killed in a shoot out with state police officers on March 23 in Zacoalco, a municipality located 20 miles to the west of Guadalajara.
The rapid rise of the CJNG is partly due to the demise of the Knights Templar Cartel, whose infrastructure in the neighboring state of Michoacan has largely been dismantled by federal authorities. This has empowered the CJNG
as they look to seize control of the lucrative drug trafficking and extortion business in the region.
Analysts say the series of attacks on well-armed police targets is a ploy by the CJNG to send a message about its strength and superiority, not only to authorities, but also to other cartels that seeking to muster into its territory.
In an interview with Milenio TV Thursday, Jalisco Attorney General Carlos Najera said he expected the attacks by the CJNG on the state police force to continue. “What makes this criminal group especially dangerous,” he said, “is their huge economic power.”
Najera pointed out that the recent attacks have been aggravated due to the fact that “El Gringo” was very close to Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, the presumed leader of the CJNG. This week, the U.S. Department of Treasury added Oseguera and the CJNG to its blacklist of criminal organizations whose assets in the United States can be seized, and with whom U.S. citizens are prohibited from doing business with.
Officials in Puerto Vallarta dismissed suggestions that tourism might suffer as a result of negative fallout from Monday’s deadly ambush, which was widely reported in the international press. Soyatan is situated in the municipality of San Sebastian de Oeste, about 55 kilometers from Puerto Vallarta. The mayor of San Sebastian said residents of the town – one of Mexico’s “Pueblos Magicos” – were understandably tense and acknowledged that tourists will be more cautious about using the highway that runs through the municipality from Vallarta to Mascota.
In a bid to block access to the ambush site, the well-coordinated delinquents set fire to vehicles, causing panic among motorists and prompting many to turn back to their points of origin. Police later sealed off the highway to all traffic for several hours.
Monday’s incident represents the biggest single loss suffered by the FUR since the force was created last year. Wednesday, in the presence of colleagues and grieving family members, and with their coffins draped in flags bearing the Jalisco crest, the fallen officers were lauded for their heroism by Jalisco Governor Aristoteles Sandoval, who vowed the perpetrators would pay for their crimes.
The officers have been named as Debi Almeida Hernández, Jesús Adrián Chávez Hernández, Valente Chávez Hernández, Jesús Alberto Chávez Rodríguez, Bonifacio Velázquez Díaz, Gerardo Rojas Soto, Juan Carlos Cázares López, Ricardo de Jesús Uribe Niño, Juan Antonio Nolasco Reynaga, Pedro Oliveros Rosa, Gilberto Aguilar García, Gerardo Hernández Padilla, Ramón Águila Espejo, Rosendo Fregoso Ramírez y Rigoberto Murillo Prieto.
The Fuerza Unica
The Fuerza Unica Regional consists of around 1,400 officers and 200 vehicles of various types. Units are stationed in 19 regional headquarters in the state of Jalisco, each with their sphere of influence.
In March last year, Najera told the Guadalajara Reporter that the Fuerza Unica’s fleets of five patrol cars carrying ten officers would be able “to deal with any kind of risky occurrence.”
He stressed the huge difference between these convoys and the run-of-the-mill single municipal patrol that “usually carries two officers on board.”
FUR officers have been selected for their abilities from local police forces. They earn 15,000 pesos a month ($US1,000) – a good salary compared with most other police corporations.
According to Najera, officers in the special response unit are mostly deployed for high-impact crimes, having the correct skills to engage heavily armed criminals, work in hostage situations and make high-profile arrests.