Meanwhile, dozens of police officers in the Mexican border city of Tijuana have been arrested in an anti-corruption sweep, and 15 bodies with marks of torture were discovered just over the border from Brownsville, Texas. The U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, where drug hit men were blamed for killing three people connected to the consulate in March, abruptly closed today for security reasons. It's unclear whether any of the developments are related.
Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel, No. 3 in command of Mexico's infamous Sinaloa cartel, was gunned down Thursday in the western city of Guadalajara, after he fired on soldiers and killed one of them, Mexican army spokesman Gen. Edgar Ruiz Villegas told reporters. Sinaloa is believed to be run by Mexico's most-wanted drug suspect, billionaire Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, who is still at large.
The 56-year-old Coronel was the reputed founder of Mexico's methamphetamine trade and had been indicted in the United States, which had a $5 million bounty out on him. According to the FBI, Coronel was "the forerunner in producing massive amounts of methamphetamine in clandestine laboratories in Mexico, then smuggling it into the U.S." Details were reported by several news agencies.
Coronel is the second top drug trafficker killed in Mexico in the past year, and his death is likely the biggest boon to date for Calderon, who has waged war on drug trafficking since taking office in 2006. He's dispatched nearly 50,000 extra Mexican troops in the fight, but drug violence is still rampant. Commandos killed Arturo Beltran Leyva, another former Guzman ally, in a December raid.
With Coronel dead, the Sinaloa cartel faces a power vacuum that could lead to disorganization and infighting, Tony Payan, a political scientist at the University of Texas in El Paso, told Bloomberg News.
"We're talking about the person who is right next to the most powerful gangster in Mexico," Payan said. "This is the biggest fish Calderon has captured so far."
In Tijuana, Mexican forces rounded up 56 members of several local law enforcement agencies Thursday in one of the area's largest-ever purges of allegedly corrupt police. Gen. Alfonso Duarte Mugica told the Los Angeles Times that the captured officers are accused of having ties to the Arellano Felix drug cartel, which employs police as bodyguards and informants.
The U.S. Consulate in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez is closed today to "review its security posture," according to a statement on its website. "Authorities are investigating the situation," it said.
In March, Lesley Enriquez, an American working at the consulate; her American husband, Arthur Redelfs; and Jorge Alberto Salcido, the Mexican husband of another U.S. consulate employee, were gunned down after leaving a birthday party in the city. U.S. and Mexican officials said at the time that they suspected members of the Los Aztecas gang of being behind the attack. Earlier this month, a car bomb killed two policemen and two medics in Ciudad Juarez, in the city's first such car bombing, also blamed on suspected drug gang members.
On Thursday, the bodies of 15 people with gunshot wounds and signs of torture were discovered along a remote road in northern Mexico, not far from Brownsville, Texas. Officials told Agence France-Press that the victims had "their hands tied, their eyes blindfolded and bore visible signs of torture" including obvious head injuries. Two days earlier, eight human heads were found alongside a road in the nearby state of Durango, AFP reported, in another grisly find blamed on drug cartel hit squads.
Coincidentally, Durango is where Coronel was born and where he first got his start in drug trafficking, according to CNN.
