Mexico Worries: Is Michoacan Violence Causing 'Cucaracha Effect'? Richard Fausset - The Los Angeles Times
go to original January 22, 2014

A picture made available Monday shows the aftermath of an attack on an Oxxo store, which was targeted Sunday by an armed group in Tizayuca, in Mexico's Hidalgo state. (European Pressphoto Agency)

MEXICO CITY — It is known here as the “cucaracha effect,” the possibility that a heavy government crackdown in one part of Mexico will simply send the bad guys scurrying off, cockroach-like, to some other place and cause new trouble.

There was intense concern Tuesday that members of the violent drug cartel called the Knights Templar were flowing out of their home base in Michoacan, the southwestern state to which federal police and troops were deployed last week to bring order to areas the cartel has long dominated.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto was forced to send in the federal reinforcements after a number of “self-defense” vigilante groups went on the offensive, announcing that they planned to drive out the Knights Templar on their own. It was a serious domestic security matter for the president, but it initially appeared to be limited to one state.

Now, however, mysterious attacks on a series of convenience stores have raised the possibility that the trouble in Michoacan is spreading.

Read the rest at The Los Angeles Times

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