After a weekend of violence, the Mexican government said Monday it sent 1,200 more troops to the cartel-dominated western state of Michoacan. Three convenience stores and five vehicles had been set alight, a tactic often used by drug cartels in the state to block roads and enforce extortion demands.
A Defense Department statement said the soldiers and National Guard members were deployed over the weekend. It said they were ordered to prevent cartels from blocking any more roads, “so that people can go about their business normally.”
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that “peace and tranquility” had been restored to the region and called the weekend violence, acts of “propaganda and publicity.”
Lime growers and farmers in the township of Buenavista complained in recent weeks of widespread drug cartel extortion, and in Apatzingan most basic goods cost almost double their normal price because the cartels takes a slice of most purchases. That kind of mass threats and extortion of lime growers sparked an uprising by civilian vigilante groups a decade ago.
Source: taiwannews.com.tw
