MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities identified the charred remains of an investigative journalist from Michoacán kidnapped a month ago. This is the seventh case of a reporter who covered the government or drug cartels being murdered.
Knights Templar cartel gunmen shot down a police helicopter in the Mexican State of Michoacán. Authorities have seized multiple RPGs, rockets and other ground-to-air weapons.
Pope Francis I celebrated Mass on the Mexican side of the Texas-Mexican border, made the sign of the cross, and blessed the people gathered there in Ciudad Juarez. He then called for governments and others to have “open hearts” to the “tragedy that is forced migration.”
A Vatican Radio message on the fourth day of Pope Francis’ trip to Mexico, acknowledges the “escalating number of ‘desparacidos’” in the country but does not mention their manner of death, and the network of ovens operated in the state of Coahuila.
Pope Francis will be in Morelia, the capital of the state of Michoacan today speaking to citizens and young people who have lived in a country hit hard by drugs, drug smuggling, and trafficking by violent drug cartels. He begins his fourth day of his Apostolic Journey to Mexico.
As brutal drug violence in the Mexican states of Michoacán and Guerrero continues, a Mexican prosecutor is claiming that vigilante groups supposedly battling drug cartels alongside the government have been extensively infiltrated by criminals.
In one of the most turbulent areas affected by Mexico’s drug war, more violence is expected after two rival militia leaders were exonerated by a judge for acting in self-defense.
The March 10 ruling resulted in the release from prison of Hipólito Mora, founder of one of the first so-called autodefensa groups in the town of La Ruana, Michoacan, along with 26 of his men, according to a Vice News report. Luis Antonio “El Americano” Torres, leader of the rival Buenavista group, was expected to be released very soon.
