HomeNewsBriefBodies Dumped Around Mexico City Before Local Election
BRIEF

Bodies Dumped Around Mexico City Before Local Election

BELTRAN LEYVA ORG / 5 JUL 2011 BY PATRICK CORCORAN EN

On the eve of a vital gubernatorial election in Mexico State, five dismembered bodies were left in plastic bags in two cities, with notes attributing the killings to the Mano con Ojos drug gang.

As CNN reports, the bodies, all accompanied by hand-written notes, were found in the populous Mexico City suburbs of Huixquilucan and Naucalpan on Saturday night.

Alfredo Castillo, the state’s attorney general, said that the murders were timed to coincide with the election, so as to make an impression while media attention was concentrated on Mexico State. The election has sparked more interest than the typical gubernatorial contest because the outgoing governor, Enrique Peña Nieto, is considered a clear front-runner in the 2012 presidential elections.

The Mano con Ojos (Hand with Eyes), a spinoff of the Beltran Levya gang, has emerged in recent months as a violent force in the region. It has been engaged in a turf war with another emerging group of retail dealers known as the Central Cartel, as well as the Familia Michoacana, which has been caught in an internecine battle with the Caballeros Templarios and has lost influence over the past several months.

As InSight Crime noted in May, the authorities recently charged more than a dozen municipal police officers in Huixquilucan with protecting the Mano con Ojos.

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

JALISCO CARTEL / 7 DEC 2022

Violence between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Cartel in Zacatecas has now seen judged and police chiefs being targeted.

DISPLACEMENT / 3 MAR 2022

Without the bodies, the exact number of people executed in broad daylight at a funeral in Mexico's western state of…

BRAZIL / 23 NOV 2022

A lack of regulation surrounding how crypto-currencies are used by organized crime has left Latin America dangerously exposed.

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Contributes Expertise Across the Board 

22 SEP 2023

This week InSight Crime investigators Sara García and María Fernanda Ramírez led a discussion of the challenges posed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan within urban contexts. The…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…