Mexican authorities mentioned Thursday that they arrested an alleged organized crime determine within the western state of Michoacan in reference to final October’s killing of an outspoken chief of the state’s lime growers.
Safety Secretary Omar García Harfuch said on social media that authorities arrested the person often known as “El Botox,” allegedly chargeable for extorting lime growers and for numerous homicides, together with the killing of agricultural leader Bernardo Bravo.
A Michoacan state official, who spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t approved to talk publicly, confirmed the suspect’s full title was César Alejandro Sepúlveda Arellano, chief of a bunch often known as the White Trojans, or Blancos de Troya. The group is understood to work with Los Viagras, a prison group allied with the Jalisco New Technology Cartel.
García Harfuch mentioned there have been 11 arrest orders for him for extortion and murder. He has additionally been accused of attacking authorities with explosives.
Garcia Harfuch, who posted an image of Sepulveda Arellano in handcuffs, known as him “a precedence goal and generator of violence in Michoacan.”
Safety Secretary Omar García Harfuch
Final August, Sepulveda Arellano was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Division.
Michoacan Gov. Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla mentioned in a press release that his arrest Thursday represented “an awesome blow in opposition to extortion” within the state, which is Mexico’s largest producer of limes and avocados.
In October, the physique of Bravo, president of the Apatzingan Valley Citrus Producers Affiliation, was present in his car on a street within the space.
Bravo had denounced “organized crime’s everlasting business hijacking of any business exercise.”
Two weeks after his killing, a gunman killed in style Uruapan Mayor Carlos Alberto Manzo, one other outspoken critic of the cartels’ management of Michoacan. A suspect linked to the Jalisco cartel was later arrested.
The 2 homicides and the favored outcry that adopted spurred the administration of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to send more troops to Michoacan.
Final August, greater than half of lime packing warehouses within the lowlands of Michoacan closed briefly after growers and distributors mentioned they’d obtained demands from the Los Viagras and different cartels for a reduce of their revenue.
Of the varied prison teams working in Michoacan, a number of have been declared foreign terrorist organizations by the Trump administration, together with United Cartels, the New Michoacan Household and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
Cartels in lots of elements of Mexico have expanded into kidnapping and extortion to extend their revenue, demanding cash from residents and enterprise homeowners and threatening to kidnap or kill them in the event that they refuse.
In July 2024, a fisheries trade chief who complained of drug cartel extortion and unlawful fishing was shot to death within the northern border state of Baja California. Minerva Pérez was killed simply hours after she complained of widespread competitors from unlawful fishing.
