Cartel Extortion Of Mines
The murder of engineers from a mine of Canada's Vizsla company highlights a wider security issue as Mexico opens to more U.S. involvement in sector
Para leer en español click aquí.
When a Canadian company took over a gold mine in the state of Durango, Mexico, it didn’t only have to deal with the challenging bureaucracy of the Mexican government but also with the shadow power in the area - the Cabrera Sarabia faction of the Sinaloa Cartel.
A head of security for the mine described to CrashOut how they resolved the problem by coming to an agreement with the jefe de plaza, or local cartel boss. They would make a yearly payment in millions of pesos to the cartel via donations to the local municipality, which the cartel really controls. The cartel would “protect” the mine from robbery of the gold that the company cuts from the earth and hauls out in trucks.
Cartel extortion of mines in Mexico has mushroomed over the last two decades, spreading from Michoacán, where the Familia cartel began the racket in the 2000s, to Guerrero, Sonora, Sinaloa, Durango, Coahuila, and other states. Not every mine in Mexico is shaken down and extortion payments vary massively. Sometimes the cartel just extorts the service businesses, like truck companies contracted to move rock. Sometimes it extorts various links in the production chain. (More sources describe examples of extortion payments and security measures below).
The issue is highly sensitive for multiple reasons. Mexico and the United States have come to an initial agreement concerning trade of strategic minerals amid booming gold prices. The Trump White House is putting big pressure on Mexico over security. And mining companies are worried they could themselves be accused of being complicit with cartels that the U.S. State Department has classified as terrorists.
Amid these tensions on Jan. 23, gunmen kidnapped ten workers from a gold and silver mine in Concordia, Sinaloa, run by Canadian company Vizsla. The assailants were allegedly from the Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel. Mexican security forces located a series of clandestine graves in the area and as of publication have unearthed at least 12 corpses, and identified five as kidnapped mine workers.
The motive for these murders…
Sorry folks, you need to subscribe to read the rest of this story. But it’s only the price of a cuppa coffee and you get the complete archive including exclusive interviews with top players and maps of cartel territory. And now is a great time to subscribe with so much going on in this area, and I will be following the tumultuous events with reports you can trust.