Does the U.S. Want To Keep Mexico's Drug Lords In Place?: Plot to Undermine Mexico's Highly Effective Anti-Drug Cartel Vigilantes May Have Been Exposed

Journalists protest against rising violence during march in Mexico. (Photo by Knight Foundation)

By Danny Benavides
Early last week, former Major General of Mexico Jesus Jaime Garcia Miramontes posted the following message on his Facebook timeline:

Hello Facebook friends, I have some friends in the government who have knowledge that the government of Mexico, through the U.S. Embassy has recruited various commandos from the US Navy SEAL Team 6 (a special forces unit of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command), to control Mexico’s GAFE (Grupo Aeromovil de Fuerzas Especiales, or “Air-Mobile Special Forces Group” — similar to Green Berets).

These specialists are “Pochos” (“Americanized Mexicans”) fluent in both languages, and only appear in battalions claiming they were transferred from another group; they’re coordinating a frontal attack on the community guards (“autodefensas,” or self-defense forces) in the following manner:

1. Make them fight among themselves; They have infiltrated the Mexican army and the community guards, and they plan to kill 6 autodefensa leaders by making it look like infighting.

2. Setup a community guard member who traffics drugs and have this exposed in the media.

3. The government will propose the establishment of self-governance along with the collaboration of the state or federal government, but it will be a trap to disarm them.

Dr. Mireles is in great danger and there is a strategically designed plan to make it look like he has been killed by another community guard. Beware.

Warnings of this sort have been tossed around regularly since the Mexican military and federal police forces descended into Michoacan in January to conduct an all-out offensive alongside local vigilantes against organized crime groups with a stranglehold on the state, namely, Los Caballeros Templarios (the Knights Templar cartel). Locals fear a repeat of Calderon’s paramilitary crime-fighting as part of the United States’ $1.6 billion Merida Initiative security agreement, and simultaneously worry that some autodefensas may simply replace the cartels instead of banishing them from the region.

The allegations brought forth by Garcia Miramontes are not without controversy, however. In the past, he has called for the prosecution of former President Felipe Calderon accusing him of war crimes and crimes against humanity for the heavy-handed approach undertaken by his administration to smash drug cartels throughout Mexico (consider the relevant example of “Operation Michoacan”). Additionally, Garcia Miramontes has called for the resignation of current President Enrique Pena Nieto and his entire Cabinet for alleged violations of the Mexican Constitution.

In addition, records detailing Garcia Miramontes’s military career and academic credentials seem to be scarce or nonexistent. Skeptical observers take the pronouncements of Garcia Miramontes with a coarse heap of salt and are generally dubious of his credibility. In spite of all of this, his concerns and condemnations are not without merit. He speaks for a significant constituency in Mexico: disaffected, disenfranchised, and distrusting citizens fed up with organized crime, corrupted politicians, and the powerful nexus between the two.

In an interview conducted by Carmen Aristegui of MVS Noticias on the day following Garcia Miramontes’s cautionary message on social media, he elaborated upon his apprehension. According to Garcia Miramontes, when he was in Michoacan in February, he noticed the locals were constantly saying Dr. Mireles was in danger because he had become an influential spokesman for the autodefensas traveling through newly-liberated villages after considerable successes against Los Caballeros Templarios. Mireles has enemies among the cartels, surely, but he also has enemies in government and enemies within the vigilantes as well.

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