The rescue of El Vago: 80 armed men, 10 minutes and no resistance in the Sierra de Guerrero prison

Elements of the Guerrero Police and the National Guard, during the operation in Coyuca de Catalán.PEG

It happened this Wednesday morning, shortly before 7:00.

An armed commando, made up of 80 people, broke into a prison in the Sierra de Guerrero, in central Mexico, and freed one of the prisoners, a certain Samuel N, alias El Vago, an alleged kidnapper who had arrived there the day previous.

The commando arrived at the prison, detained the director, disarmed the custodians, took temporary control of the center, which depends on the state government, and left there without much problem.

All in ten minutes, as the State Prosecutor's Office reported this Thursday.

Some media have also indicated that eight other inmates took advantage of the moment to escape, a situation that the authorities have not confirmed.

In a statement, the Prosecutor's Office has given details about the seizure of the prison.

Apparently, the criminal group took hostage the director and the person in charge of the center's security, who were going out to buy food for the inmates' ranch.

The criminals detained the director, a situation that forced the custodians, three in total, to lay down their weapons.

With the head of the penalty at gunpoint, 10 of the 80 entered, located El Vago and left with him.

Within a few minutes they had vanished.

Samuel aka "El Vago".

All this happened in the Coyuca de Catalán prison, a neighboring town of Ciudad Altamirano, the regional capital, where hours before a monumental fire destroyed dozens of stalls in the central market.

On Wednesday, local and national media pointed out the possibility that both events were related, but the mayor of Altamirano reported that the origin of the fire was probably a treacherous candle from the Santeria area, where esoteric rituals are common.

The market watchman also pointed out a short circuit in the cables of a fan as a possible cause.

Coyuca's escape is linked to recent problems in other state prisons, a situation that actually affects the entire country: the lack of prison surveillance, especially those at the state level, the total or partial self-government regime that prevails in many and violence, converted into a bargaining chip in the daily life of the inmates.

You don't have to go far back to find risk situations in prisons in Guerrero.

Just in February, a riot at the Acapulco prison left 20 police officers injured.

Riots and jailbreaks actually illuminate a bigger problem, the surrender of the authorities in the face of insecurity, incapable or disinterested in any change.

The crisis of violence that Mexico has been experiencing for at least 15 years requires seeing crime as part of the machinery of the State at different levels, as shown by paradigmatic cases, such as the attack against the students of Ayotzinapa in Iguala, in 2014. In Tierra Caliente, violence is just as common and Coyuca's escape is only the last link in a long chain.

The Vago and San Miguel

Coyuca and Altamirano are towns in Tierra Caliente, a region that includes municipalities of Guerrero, but also the State of Mexico and Michoacán.

These two municipalities in particular appear on the border of Guerrero with Michoacán and are neighbors of San Miguel Totolapan.

In October, hitmen gunned down 20 people in San Miguel, including the mayor and his father, also a mayor years ago.

It was the worst massacre in years in the area.

Federal and state authorities announced operations by security forces, including the National Guard and the Army.

A month and a half later, another group of hitmen broke through the security of a nearby state prison without a hitch.

The Prosecutor's Office has reported that the escaped prisoner, alias El Vago, was the leader of a gang of kidnappers, accused of perpetrating at least one kidnapping, a few months ago in Chilpancingo, the state capital.

The agency detained El Vago this Monday and on Tuesday he arrived in Coyuca, where he did not spend a whole day before his henchmen released him.

Fond of giving names of criminal groups, acronyms and aliases, the authorities have avoided mentioning any this time, something surprising given the geography of the evasion.

The October massacre in San Miguel returned to the headlines the names of two old criminal gangs, Los Tequileros and the Familia Michoacana, rooted in Tierra Caliente for more than a decade.

Initially, the authorities blamed the former for the massacre, knowing the closeness of the murdered mayor and his father to the Family, and his old enmity with Los Tequileros.

Even one of the leaders of the Family, José Alfredo Hurtado, alias La Fresa, said in a video posted on Facebook that the hitmen were looking for him, as well as the mayor, and that they had already killed the assassins.

But as the days went by, the federal government changed its mind and said that the massacre had actually been the work of La Familia Michoacana.

According to this version, the criminal group had accused the mayor and his team of treason, guilty, in his opinion, of the death months before of another politician from San Miguel, a favorite of the criminal group for the future in the town.

This second theory seems to make more sense, since the authorities had considered Los Tequileros dismantled for years, after a wave of mass kidnappings perpetrated by them at the end of the years of the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018).

Be that as it may, the presence of an 80-person armed group in Tierra Caliente is difficult to understand without mixing up the names of the region's criminal gangs, mainly La Familia Michoacana.

It is worth noting, however, other acronyms, those of the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, CJNG, present in neighboring municipalities of Michoacán.

According to press reports, in recent years, cells of the group have tried to reach Coyuca, causing chaos in some communities in the municipality.

Not surprisingly, this same year dozens of families from mountain communities left their homes due to threats from criminal groups, a situation that has not yet been resolved.

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