'La Nueva Familia' Cartel Announces Its Arrival Amid Michoacan Turmoil James Bargent - InSight Crime
go to original February 9, 2016

Banner hung by the 'Nueva Familia' (Twitter)

"Narco-banners" hung around Michoacán have announced the arrival of a new criminal organization in a sign the underworld in the troubled central Mexican state is reorganizing yet again after several years of turmoil.

In the early hours of February 7, banners signed by the "Nueva Familia" (New Family) were strewn around the municipality of Zamora. The banners declared a "cleaning out" of members of the Jalisco Cartel – New Generation (Cartel de Jalisco - Nueva Generación - CJNG) as well as extortionists, kidnappers, robbers, rapists and assassins, reported Proceso.

Further to the south, in the port city of Lázaro Cárdenas, banners appeared with a similar message but signed by "Los Justicieros."

Michoacán Attorney General José Martín Godoy Castro told media that the Nueva Familia was not a new criminal organization and that the messages were placed by the network known as the Viagras, reported Excelsior. Godoy added the banners in Lázaro Cárdenas were placed by cells formerly connected to the once dominant but now largely dismantled Knights Templar.

However, intelligence officials speaking anonymously to El Universal, claimed the messages came from a new alliance formed by the Viagras and an off-shoot of the Knights headed by Homero González Rodríguez, alias "El Gallito." González is the nephew of now dead messianic drug lord Nazario Moreno González, alias "El Chayo," who was a founding member of both the Knights Templar and the organization that spawned them, the original Familia Michoacana.

Michoacán has long been and remains a key territory for Mexican organized crime, but the state's underworld has witnessed serious upheaval in recent years.

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