Cartels To Their Operatives: "Don't Mess With The World Cup"
Bosses tell gunmen in Guadalajara and Monterrey to let the games go on, CrashOut reveals
Ioan Grillo and Juan Alberto Cedillo
Mexico’s cultural center of Guadalajara, which will host four World Cup games with teams including Spain, Colombia and Uruguay, is home to the fearsome Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which runs narco trafficking and other rackets across the hemisphere. Mexico’s business capital of Monterrey, meanwhile, which will host teams including Sweden, Japan and South Korea, is fought over by the Northeast Cartel and Gulf Cartel, who run drugs, human smuggling and stolen oil over the U.S. border into Texas.
Among recent incidents, the Jalisco mob in February carried out more than 250 attacks across Mexico, blocking streets with trucks and burning stores after Mexican soldiers shot dead its supreme leader El Mencho. Then in the border city of Reynosa in April, the Gulf Cartel torched buildings following the arrest of a boss known as Metro 9. All three cartels have unleashed mass murder over the years, lighting up streets with firefights and burying bodies in mass graves (including one just 13 km from Guadalajara’s Akron Stadium).
However, cartels in these areas have ordered their operatives not to mess with tourists, football teams or FIFA officials during the World Cup, according to two Mexican security officials and two cartel affiliates interviewed by CrashOut.
“They don’t want to bring more trouble on themselves,” said a police commander in Jalisco state, home to Guadalajara. “They are intelligent in how they operate. They are going to be prudent.”
Police in Jalisco, he said, are instead watching out more for trouble from regular criminals who are not part of these cartels but could try to steal from tourists. They will be countering this threat with a huge police presence, he said, including a major deployment of plainclothes officers, as well National Guard and army units near the stadium.
The Security Department in Nuevo León, home to Monterrey, said in a written response to CrashOut that more than 15,000 officers, from city, state and federal agencies, will secure games there. “Officers of the Fuerza Civil [Nuevo León police] and municipal police have received training in Crowd Control and Tactical Attention to Mass Events with support from U.S. authorities and FIFA,” it said.
Mexico City, which will host five World Cup games including the opening match on June 11, does not suffer from extreme cartel violence. While the crime mafias have operatives in the capital they do not unleash the level of murder and mayhem suffered in various other parts of Mexico, and it has a homicide rate lower than dozens of U.S. cities. However, it often has protests, including a current encampment by a teacher trade union.
In Guadalajara, a Jalisco Cartel operative said that strict orders had been given not to hurt foreigners who…
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