La Familia Michoacana

Lore & Background

Mexican analysts believe that La Familia formed in the 1980s with the stated purpose of bringing order to Michoacán, emphasizing help and protection for the poor. In its initial incarnation, La Familia formed as a group of vigilantes, spurred to power to counter interloping kidnappers and drug dealers. La Familia came to the foreground in the 1990s as the Gulf Cartel's paramilitary group, designed to seize control of the illegal drug trade in Michoacán state from rival drug cartels.

While it initially trained with Los Zetas, in 2006 the group splintered off into an independent drug trafficking operation. La Familia has a strong rivalry with both Los Zetas and the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel, but strong ties with the Sinaloa Cartel of Joaquin Guzman. After the death of Nazario Moreno González, José de Jesús Méndez Vargas (El Chango Méndez) took control of the cartel. However, his authority was disputed by the cartel co-founders Enrique Plancarte Solís and Servando Gómez Martínez (La Tuta), who formed an offshoot of La Familia calling itself Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar).

Méndez Vargas was captured on June 21, 2011, by Mexican police in the state of Aguascalientes. The Mexican Federal Police declared that the cartel has been disbanded. However, the organization continued to exercise its power and influence throughout Michoacán and Guerrero states.

Reader's Guide

La Familia cartel is sometimes described as quasi-religious since its leaders, Moreno González and Méndez Vargas, refer to their assassinations and beheadings as 'divine justice'. The cartel may have direct or indirect ties with devotees of the New Jerusalem religious movement. La Familia's boss and spiritual leader Nazario Moreno González published his own 'bible,' and a copy seized by Mexican federal agents reveals an ideology that mixes evangelical-style self-help with insurgent peasant slogans.

Moreno González seems to have based most of his doctrine on a work by Christian writer John Eldredge, using his own understanding of the idea in Eldredge's message that every man must have 'a battle to fight, a beauty to rescue and an adventure to live.' The Mexican justice department stated in a report that Gonzalez Moreno has made Eldredge's book Salvaje de Corazón (Wild at Heart) required reading for La Familia gang members and has paid rural teachers and National Development Education (CONAFE) to circulate Eldredge's writings throughout the Michoacán countryside.

La Familia cartel emphasizes religion and family values during recruitment and has placed banners in areas of operations claiming that it does not tolerate substance abuse or exploitation of women and children. According to Mexico Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna, it recruits members from drug rehabilitation clinics by helping addicts recover and then forcing them into service for the drug cartel or be killed. Advancement within the organization depends as much on regular attendance at prayer meetings as on target practice.

The cartel gives loans to farmers, businesses, schools and churches, and it advertises its benevolence in local newspapers in order to gain social support.

Did You Know?

• Nazario Moreno González, known as El Más Loco (The Craziest One), carried a 'bible' of his own sayings and insisted his traffickers avoid using the narcotics they produce and sell.
• On July 11, 2009, cartel lieutenant Arnoldo Rueda Medina was arrested; La Familia members attacked the Federal Police station in Morelia to try to free him, killing two soldiers and three federal policemen.
• Three days later, on July 14, 2009, the cartel tortured and murdered twelve Mexican Federal Police agents and dumped their bodies along a mountain highway with a written message.