By: Ernesto Martínez Elorriaga | Translated by Valor for Borderland Beat
Morelia, Michoacán—A video message recorded in April 2014 by the former leader of the autodefensas, José Manuel Mireles Valverde, was released in social networks. The video message was intended to be spread after his death. According to Mireles, organized crime groups, federal and state governments, and even his wife, intended to eliminate him.
Some parts of the message had already been released, however on the Grillonautas2 YouTube channel, the entire video, with a duration of 46 minutes, was released where it is clarified that Mireles lost all the support of the federal government after taking Tancítaro with a group of autodefensas, on November, 16, 2013.
In early November 2013, Mireles says, he met with several federal officials in Mexico City, including Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong and the director of the Center for Research and National Security (CISEN), who approved his proposals:
To clean up organized crime throughout Michoacán; restoring the rule of law; liberate all imprisoned autodefensas; to appoint a single spokesperson on behalf of all autodefensa groups, which would be Mireles, and the arrest of 20 organized crime leaders, of which seven main ones operated in the region of Tepalcatepec, from which Mireles was born.
He said that there was an unwritten agreement whereby the federal government committed to provide them with an armored unit, and “another agreement: that we would no longer move to other municipalities,” and in the case that they would progress to other municipalities, it would have to be jointly with the federal government.
At that meeting, Mireles said that he planned to take Los Reyes, Aquila, Coahuayana, Uruapan, Ario de Rosales and Apatzingán. They asked him to wait a week. There was no response. “We chose to take Tancítaro (November 16, 2013) in response to the request for help. The day we decided to enter, the body of a seven-year-old girl, the daughter of an avocado farmer, appeared and her nine-year-old sister disappeared, even though they had paid 23 million pesos.”
He said that later they took El Chauz, municipality of La Huacana and Churumuco. Immediately, CISEN called for him where they incriminated him for having advanced without warning. On January 5, 2014, the plane in which he was riding in crash landed on a road to El Chauz.
“From that moment on, my natural enemies ceased to be The Knights Templar—the state government, the federal government and some autodefensa coordinators…even my own wife, amounted to be my enemies,” he said.
Source: La Jornada