The Tequileros are a very local group, but they have come to exercise a lot of violence.
His influence was limited to two or three municipalities in the state of Guerreroin the Tierra Caliente region, where there is a high production and transfer of drugs.
Last Wednesday, an armed gang carried out a large-scale massacre that drew attention beyond Mexico and the authorities point to the Tequileros as the alleged perpetrators.
The attackers assassinated with heavy weapons the municipal president of San Miguel Totolapan, Conrad Mendozaas well as five other municipal officials and family members and civilians who were gathered in that town.
They also killed the former mayor Juan Mendoza, who was the father of the current local president. Total, 20 people lost their livesreported on Thursday the Undersecretary of Federal Public Security, Ricardo Mejía.
“There is a dispute there with a criminal group known as the Familia Michoacana, whose heads nicknamed the Fish and the Strawberry are the criminal leaders of that region,” the official explained when advancing the first indications of the investigation.
Conrado Mendoza was killed in the attack that occurred on October 6.
The dispute between the Tequileros and the Familia Michoacana comes for a decadebut it has occurred outside the national public attention, except when there have been clashes like the one on Wednesday, security expert Víctor Sánchez explains to BBC Mundo.
“Since there is that combination of little government attention and long-standing processes of infiltration by the authorities, there is a kind of time bomb. By not including their action in large cities, such as Acapulco, they do not attract as much attention from the authorities or of the media, except when the problem spills over,” explains Sánchez.
the tequila
The name of the group comes from its founder, Raybel Jacobo de Almonte, alias the Tequilibrium.
Since the 2000s, he has led drug trafficking actions in San Miguel Totolapan, which is a municipality with high opium production, “one of the highest production in Mexico,” Sánchez describes.
Raybel Jacobo de Almonte, alias el Tequilero, is presumed to have died in 2018.
It is located in the Tierra Caliente region, which also extends to the neighboring state of Michoacán, which has historically been dominated by the Familia Michoacana group and derivative groups, such as the Knights Templar.
In the past decade, the struggle for control of a region that is highly productive in marijuana and poppy fields has reached the gates of San Miguel Totolapan.
In that dispute the Tequilero allegedly died in 2018 following a confrontation. Until today it is assumed that Raybel Jacobo de Almonte died, despite the fact that his body was never identified.
“It is an organization that lost some strength with the alleged downfall of its leader, but we see that it did not disappear, that it continued to be present,” explains Sánchez.
“But by concentrating its force in a single municipality, it is difficult for the media to reach it, except in these cases in which there is an increase in violence or situations of paradigmatic violence.”
However, the Tequileros have used violence to carry out kidnappings and extortions in San Miguel Totolapan, Ajuchitlán del Progreso and parts of Arcelia.
Today, men identified by their nicknames, the bum and the muleare the ones who assumed the leadership of the Tequileros.
In 2020, La Mula stated in a video that they had made a pact with the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel, which rivals the Familia Michoacana. But for Sánchez, it is only a minor alliance to traffic drugs.
Why the attack on their “turf”?
Since the last decade there have been suspicions that the authorities in San Miguel Totolapan collaborated with the Tequileros.
The recent leak of documents from the Secretary of National Defense (Sedena) shows this.
The 2014 confidential report titled “Municipal Presidents of the State of Guerrero with Presumed Links to Drug Trafficking” identifies Saul Beltran Orozco.
Complaints obtained by the Sedena say that he was “compadre” of Raybel Jacobo de Almonte, “leader of the criminal group whom he protects and provides information.”
As occurs in many small towns in the country, “there is a capture of the municipal apparatus to obtain income through the placement of municipal officials,” explains Sánchez.
One hypothesis of the case indicates that Mayor Conrado Mendoza created an agreement with the Familia Michpacana.
Last Wednesday’s attack once morest Conrado Mendoza occurred when he was presumably going to hold a meeting with Jose Alfredo Hurtado Olascoaga el Cutterlocal leader of the Familia Michoacana.
Hurtado Olascoaga himself published a video on Thursday in which he indicates that he was regarding to get out of his vehicle to meet with Mendoza when the attack from which he was able to flee was unleashed.
The attack, Sánchez presumes, is due to “a kind of revenge for having changed sides.”
As in other regions of Mexico captured by criminal groups, in San Miguel Totolapan there are a combination of factors that favor these gangs: little employment or investment, poverty and corruption of authorities.
That is why Sánchez points out that they create “time bombs” that explode from time to time.
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