At least 14 people were killed in a fight between members of a drug gang and local villagers last week after residents fought back against extortion demands, according to the Mexican authorities.
Ten of the people killed in Mexico state were members of the La Familia Michoacana cartel, and the rest were local farmers, Mexican authorities said. Amongst the dead was a cartel leader known as “Comandante Payaso” (Commander Clown), the alleged leader of La Familia in the region behind the rise in the extortion fee.
Videos by VICE
The clash happened on the afternoon of December 8 after members of La Familia Michoacana announced a rise in the extortion tax to the group of farmers in the small rural town of Texcaltitlán. The farmers were already each paying a Mexican peso per square meter (around $.060) to the criminal group. The cartel now wanted double, according to local news outlets.
Extortion is a major criminal market throughout Mexico, and a way that criminal groups use violence and territorial control for profit.
“We had a very bad year [of harvests] and we barely made enough money to pay the original extortion fee. With this increase we basically had no choice but to die fighting or die from hunger,” a local farmer from Texcaltitlán who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation, told VICE News in a phone interview.
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On a gruesome video that spread on social media, residents and members of the drug gang can be seen arriving at the local soccer field where they both had agreed to meet to deliver the extortion money. The video shows a small group of people heavily armed with AK-47s and armored vests. Some were dressed in fake Mexican military uniforms.
After a few minutes talking, someone in the group fires a gunshot and hell breaks loose. The farmers, some of them armed with shotguns, machetes and sticks, begin to chase the alleged criminals. Some are killed with gunshots while others are hacked at with machetes.
A different video shows several charred bodies inside two white pickup trucks, allegedly members of La Familia Michoacana cartel.
“We told the Mexican army that this was going to happen because we were not going to pay anymore. We asked for their back up and no-one showed up,” the farmer told VICE News.
Commander Clown, one of the victims of the confrontation, had long been in the crosshairs of law enforcement. “[He} was a main target for us for his role in the criminal organization. We had several investigations ongoing to go after him,” said Andrés Andrade, chief of police of Mexico State.
La Familia Michoacana is a Mexican drug cartel founded in the late 1980s in the Mexican central state of Michoacán, although its presence is now mostly based in Mexico State, according to authorities.
In June 2022, eleven members of the same cartel were killed in the same town during a shootout against state police officers. The clash gained notoriety after the authorities found a spider monkey among the victims killed.
Graphic photos of the dead monkey wearing a green camouflage hoodie under a black tactical vest and a diaper were shared over social media.
