NarcoBolo:Sinaloa
Fighting in the community of Las Tatemas, Sinaloa, forced some 50 families to flee their homes as armed groups burned 14 homes in that area; Las Tatemas becomes a ghost town
The information was confirmed by Eduardo Ramirez Cruz, police chief of the Sinaloa municipality, who said he only knows of the 14 homes burned.
The police chief said the damage occurred between morning and noon on Monday, but he only had the data as a rumor, because no complaint had been received and was just yesterday they sent patrols to the area that confirmed this fact,
Las Tatemas was like a ghost town, since according to the Department of Public Safety all the inhabitants fled. 50 percent of families in El Amapal emigrated.
Ramirez Cruz said that officers at the scene found no bodies or injured people, nor did they find burned vehicles.
The official police report does not state how many subjects participated in the attack or the number of vehicles.
In the Hospital de la Sierra of Sinaloa yesterday had not reported the number of of persons injured by gunfire or burned.
With this fact and are 27 homes that have been burned by heavily armed groups in the same area in the mountains of Sinaloa.
The fight between the cartels of Sinaloa and Beltran Leyva for control of planting marijuana
Commission on Human Rights Defenders in Sinaloa (CDDHS) estimated that in at least 11 of the 18 municipalities sinaloenses between 25,000 and 30,000 displaced by violence, especially in the mountainous area.
InSight Crime Analysis
Preliminary investigations suggest a large group of heavily armed men arrived in the village of Las Tatemas on the morning of November 24 and opened fire on residents. After a brief confrontation, the armed group set about torching the villagers' houses, local media reported.
Reports of the attack reached the authorities the same day, but police only began investigations four days later. When they arrived they found the town abandoned and the majority of houses destroyed.
The charred remains of two people have been found so far and authorities have not ruled out the possibility that more died in the attack.
Over the last year, thousands of people have been driven from their homes by the battle between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Beltran Leyva Organization over the prized drug production territory of the so-called “Golden Triangle.”
The region, which is the birthplace of both previously allied organizations, is the epicentre of Mexican marijuana and poppy production and authorities believe it is also home to many industrial-sized methamphetamine labs.
The Sinaloa Cartel and the BLO have been locked in a deadly conflict since their acrimonious split in 2008. The ensuing violence, along with several high profile arrests, has left the BLO severely weakened. Nevertheless the BLO, sometimes working alongside the Zetas or the Juarez Cartel, have recently been making incursions into Sinaloa state and the Golden Triangle, in an attempt to claim control of territories ceded to the Sinaloa Cartel, and this latest attack is likely to be linked to the resulting conflict.
The situation in the region is further complicated by small, mostly blood-related criminal clans known as "gavillas,” who have operated in the region since the Mexican civil war. The gavillas remained quiet and controlled when one organization dominated the region, but the conflict has has forced numerous gavillas into choosing sides or, in at least one case, break off on their own, and since then they have been blamed for attacks similar to the assault on Las Tatemas.
