Just a day after a prominent anti-cartel activist was buried in western Mexico, violence among rival groups escalated as Mexican citizens were forced out of their vehicles, a family had their car stolen, and a driver was shot and killed.
Hipolito Mora, a community activist in Mexico’s Michoacan state who preached “self-defense,” was ambushed and killed with three of his followers on Thursday. Three days later tension between the Viagras cartel and the rival Jalisco cartel spilled out into the open, according to the Associated Press.
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Cartel gunmen reportedly blocked roads in and out of Apatzingan on Sunday. “They told me to park my truck across the road. They said if I moved it, they would burn it,” a truck driver told the outlet.
A family was reportedly carjacked at gunpoint, with the car being used to assist in killing a driver just a few blocks away, his body being left to hang over the passenger seat as his car balanced on the bridge guardrail in front of him.
United States lawmakers have seen the violence to the far south and been adamant about protecting the border by ensuring that both the violence among Mexican drug cartels and the smuggling of drugs does not cross over. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) on Saturday called for the president in the near future to activate the military against the drug cartels in Mexico, citing concerns with the opioid crisis and the cartels growing in power.
“You think the fentanyl problem is bad now, what about three years from now when the Mexican drug cartels are more powerful than the Mexican government itself?” Vance said.
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The community activist Mora’s death portends more calamitous events in and around Apatzingan, as the vigilante community leader represented a rare defense against the cartels’ violence, extortion, and influence.
While Apatzingan is not close to the border, the emboldened and opportunistic Viagras and Jalisco cartels are not a positive sight for a U.S. government trying to shore up its immigration security.
