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.”