Thursday, March 10, 2011

More New Gangs, Now with Fantastic Names

I wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago about the spike in new drug gangs in Mexico, from the Resistance to the Independent Cartel of Acapulco. Here are a couple more for you: via Burro Hall, a new gang called La Mano con Ojos sent a heck of a brutal message in Naucalpan, Mexico State, while Zach Lindsey of Mexico Weekly sent me this article about Los Caballeros Templarios, who have announced their existence in Michoacán with a narcomanta. Both have indicated that they are a reaction against the evidently collapsing Familia Michoacana.

Both of these, you may have noticed, also seem to have taken some care in choosing their name; are marketing execs moonlighting for criminal groups?

2 comments:

Mexfiles said...

"Mano con Ojos" appears to be a person, or at most, a person with a few underlings... and sounds like a private (?) death squad more than a new "cartel". I get the feeling we sometimes assume that every sub-lieutenant in every large criminal organization, and every little informal group of baddies, is another "cartel"... and that local police or reporters, using a local name, confuse foreign correspondents into creating new "cartels" where there are none.

pc said...

What makes you think they are a private death squad? Not that it's impossible, I just don't see anything particular that would lead me to that conclusion. RE your other point, that's true if you are referring to multinational groups, but that's kind of why I didn't use the word "cartel". Whether or not either of these two becomes important remains to be seen, but I definitely think we can call them a gang or a criminal group, which were the labels I used.