Mexican Cartel Boss Is Killed

The Bible-quoting, drug-running leader of Mexico’s notorious La Familia cartel, Nazario Moreno González, is believed to have been killed by federal troops in a two-day gunbattle in the beleaguered state of Michoacan. —JCL

The Guardian:

The bible-quoting leader of one of Mexico’s six major drug cartels is believed to have been killed in two days of skirmishes with federal forces in a state on the country’s Pacific coast.

A tense calm hung over the western state of Michoacán today after fighting that began on Wednesday night and was initially concentrated in and around the city of Apatzingan, one of the core bastions of the La Familia cartel.

“Different sources of information obtained during the operation coincide that Nazario Moreno González was killed yesterday,” a government spokesman Alejandro Poire said in a statement to the press. One of the cartel’s founders, Moreno González went by the nicknames El Chayo, The Doctor and the Craziest One, and was infamous for intermingling self-help maxims with quasi-religious justifications for killing rivals.

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AP / Primera Plana

Federal police agents stand next to a truck riddled with bullets in Apatzingan on Friday. At least 11 people died in two days of fighting with members of the La Familia drug cartel.