A total of five units from the Special Forces (FES) of the Mexican Navy will be tasked with hunting down the leaders of criminal organizations operating in Michoacán.
According to federal sources, these teams will only arrive in the state once the whereabouts of the heads of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), La Familia Michoacana, Los Caballeros Templarios, Los Viagras, and Los Blancos de Troya, among others, have been located.
These marines, who will be deployed under the Michoacán Plan, have specialized training as snipers, explosives experts, and medics, and will also have the support of five unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) used by the Navy for intelligence gathering.
Once the operations have located the priority targets, elite units will depart from various parts of the country for Michoacán.
Their mission, sources specified, is very clear: to “arrest and extract” each of these dangerous criminals so that the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) can request federal judges to formally charge them and order their imprisonment in maximum-security prisons.
Among the priority targets in Michoacán is William Edwin Rivera Padilla, alias El Barbas, a regional leader of the CJNG cartel, who answers to Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias El Mencho, and for whom the state Attorney General’s Office is offering a reward of half a million pesos.
Also identified are Nicolás Sierra Santana, El Gordo Viagra and/or El Coruco, and his brother Gabino, El Ingeniero, both leaders of the criminal group Los Viagra, and who are believed to be behind the murder of the former founder of the self-defense forces, Hipólito Mora Chávez, ambushed in La Ruana, municipality of Buenavista, on June 29, 2023.
