A new cartel war appears to be taking place in Mexico’s Pacific Coast. Unlike the wars in the northern part of the country where rival cartel factions fight each other for control of lucrative areas, the new war pits a drug cartel against Mexico’s police. In the most recent shootout, a group of cartel hitmen ambushed a convoy of state police officers travelling along the highway that connects the state capital of Guadalajara with the resort town of Puerto Vallarta. The attack killed 15 police officers and injured 5 others, information provided to Breitbart Texas by the Jalisco Attorney General’s Office revealed.
The attack appears to have been carried out by the hyper-violent “Cartel Nueva Generacion Jalisco” or Jalisco’s New Generation Cartel also known as the Mata Zetas or Zeta Killers. The group had been a faction of the Sinaloa Federation designed to lead the charge against Los Zetas. Since the 2010 death of Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, the group began to act in an independent fashion and unconfirmed banners point to a possible alliance with an offshoot of the Tijuana Cartel.
While in the past cartels have clashed with authorities, usually the casualties have been in the part of the criminal organizations. Since last month, members of Cartel Nueva Generacion Jalisco have taken the fight to the police leaving a trail of bodies in their path.
As previously reported by Breitbart Texas , just last month, a group of gunmen ambushed a convoy of Mexican Federales, killing five of them, and injuring several others in a brazen attack in the town of Ocotlan Jalisco. The attack killed two bystanders leaving around 11 dead including cartel gunmen
Soon after that attack, authorities killed the groups regional leader Heriberto “El Gringo” Acevedo Cardenas. This appears to have been the motive for the most recent ambush and the attempted murder of Jalisco’s Security Commissioner Alejandro Solorio who oversees federal and state taskforces in that state. In response to the attempt on the commissioner’s life, Mexican authorities arrested 15 suspected gunmen who are believed to be part of Cartel Nueva Generacion Jalisco.
The cartel hitmen appear to also be behind the murder of Miguel Angel Caicedo Vargas, the local police chief in the town of Zocoalco, who was gunned down earlier this week.
“The biggest concern about this new generation of cartels like the Cartel de Jalisco is that they don’t play by the “old school” mafia rules,” said border security expert and Breitbart Texas Contributing Editor Sylvia Longmire. “They don’t make it a point to avoid involving innocent people in violent incidents and often target those who have nothing to do with the drug trade because they find profit in it. More traditional cartels tend to avoid mass casualty attacks because it brings too much attention to their operations. However, newer groups like this and Los Zetas eschew the ‘old ways’ and consider their ability to act with impunity in many parts of Mexico as proof of their immunity from consequences.”
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