La Tuta's Mother

One of the grievances La Familia chief Servando La Tuta Gómez expressed during his televised comments in July was that the Federal Police was going after his family, not just him and his gang. This won't assuage his grief: La Tuta's mom was arrested (along with his brother) earlier this week.

That struck me as a questionable move on the government's part, especially as I read this:

High-level sources in the PGR said that until now they don't have any documents or testimony proving the direct involvement of the relatives of La Tuta with organized criminal activities or any other illicit act.

This is wrong both for moral and practical reasons. The moral reason is, of course, that someone shouldn't be arrested for a crime for which you have no evidence that he or she committed. The practical reason is two-fold: first, La Familia has shown the willingness to respond to arrests with terror. That's not an argument for ignoring the mafia, but why risk a wave of terror by arresting someone who may not have anything directly to with them? Especially if in so doing the government must arrest an old lady. Michoacán is one of the areas of Mexico that most resembles an insurgency, where local support for the government is said to be most lacking. All this does is make the eternal battle for hearts and minds a little harder to win.

Second, rather than taking down small fish, wouldn't it make a little more sense to try to monitor the relatives, so that they lead the government to La Tuta?

Update: She's been released.