Nazario Moreno Rodríguez

Early life

Moreno González was born in the ranchería of Guanajuatillo in Apatzingán, Michoacán, Mexico at around 5:00 a.m. on 8 March 1970. There are few details of Moreno González's upbringing, but religion may have played an important role in his early life. His parents had 13 children (including Moreno González). His father Manuel Moreno was reportedly an alcoholic and had several mistresses, and one day he left his family when Moreno González was still very young, forcing his mother to singlehandedly raise the whole family. With their father gone, Moreno González and his siblings lived under the strict discipline of their mother. According to his autobiography, Moreno González had a love-hate relationship with his mother; as a child, he was beaten by his mother for being troublesome and getting into fights. In one occasion, he recalled that his mother once forced him to make his way back to his house by walking on his knees while keeping his arms stretched like a cross throughout the whole day for stealing an animal. Such treatments helped him develop resentment as to partially explain his violent behavior as an adult, he argued. He admitted, however, that he often got into fist fights with other kids from Guanajuatillo and the surrounding rancherías. Moreno González recalled that he would not always win and that he once got into 10 fights in a single day. His violent reputation as a child helped him earn the nickname El Más Loco ("The Craziest One")—which he held onto for the rest of his life—among his siblings and other kids from the area where he grew up.

He never attended school and was illiterate for some years of his early life. He learned to read and write reportedly out of curiosity after seeing and hearing comic books and stories of Kalimán and Porfirio Cadena, El Ojo de Vidrio on the local radio station. In his autobiography, Moreno González said that as a child he believed he had the superhuman ability of speaking telepathically with animals like Kalimán did in the comics. He said he wanted to be a hero like the comic characters. As a child, he was accustomed to seeing gunmen near his home, and played las guerritas ("war games") for fun. While playing the game, he often pretended to be dead, only to say later on that he had been wounded in the game but that he had managed to survive. Aged twelve he moved to Apatzingán and made a living by selling matches, peeling onions, working at a melon field, and throwing out the trash from several booths at a marketplace. As a teenager in the late 1980s, Moreno González migrated illegally to the United States, settling in California, where he eventually began selling marijuana. After some years, he moved to Texas and in 1994 was arrested for drug trafficking charges in McAllen. Nearly a decade later in 2003, the US government charged him with conspiracy to distribute five tons of narcotics and issued an arrest warrant. González fled back to Mexico.

Background and aftermath

The alleged death of Moreno González was considered one of the most significant government victories since the start of the drug war in 2006. La Familia Michoacana was the focus of the government because their stronghold, Michoacán state, is approximately four hours away from the country's capital, Mexico City. In addition, Michoacán is the home state of former President Felipe Calderón, who made it a top priority to pacify it.

A few days after the shootout, several people carried out a peace march in Apatzingán expressing their support for the cartel with banners that read "Nazario will always live in our hearts," among others. Others protested against the presence of the federal forces in the state, and argued that the federal government—not the cartels—were responsible for increasing the violence in the country. Through several banners hung on bridges throughout the state of Michoacán, La Familia Michoacana publicly announced that they were open to the possibility of creating a "truce" (ceasefire) with the Mexican government throughout December 2010 and January 2011 to prove that they were not the source of the violence. The Mexican authorities "summarily rejected" the agreement.

After Moreno Gonzalez was reported dead, José de Jesús Méndez Vargas took the lead of La Familia Michoacana. The other cartel leader, Servando Gómez Martínez (alias "La Tuta"), fought Méndez Vargas for control of the group and eventually formed the Knights Templar Cartel, a drug cartel and pseudo-religious splinter group. The cartel was headed by Moreno González, followed by Gómez Martínez, Dionisio Loya Plancarte (alias "El Tío"), and Enrique Plancarte Solís (alias "Kike Plancarte"), in that order. However, given that the Mexican government believed that Moreno González had been killed in 2010, Gómez Martínez was regarded as the first-in-command. Since its creation, the Knights Templar Cartel became a greater security concern for the Mexican government; it began to extort lime farmers, cutters, and packers, as well as people who worked in the avocado business in Michoacán. The cartel also stole minerals from the state's reserves to later ship to China for sale on the black market. Killings, extortions, kidnappings, and arson attacks against Michoacán residents and local businesses increased. In response to the cartel's activities, autodefensa (vigilante/self-defense) groups began to emerge in Michoacán in 2011, and gained significant momentum in February 2013 when they began to push the cartel outside of the Tierra Caliente region. President Enrique Peña Nieto sent in more federal troops to Michoacán in January 2014 initially with the intent to disarm the informal groups. However, that plan was quickly abandoned following some resistance, and the government decided to sign an agreement that month with the autodefensas to combat insecurity together.

Moreno González enjoyed watching the Godfather Trilogy and the drama film Braveheart.

He went by several nicknames, including but not limited to El Chayo (hypocorism for "Nazario" or "Rosario", the Spanish word for Rosary), Víctor Nazario Castrejón Peña, El Dulce ("The Candy"), El Doctor ("The Doctor"), and El Más Loco ("The Craziest One"), In 2014, the Mexican government discovered that the drug lord also held the alias Emiliano Morelos Guevara in reference to revolutionary figures Emiliano Zapata, José María Morelos, and Che Guevara.

His father was reportedly Manuel Moreno, who died in July 2013, according to intelligence reports from Mexican federal agents. The drug lord was the uncle or cousin of Uriel Chávez Mendoza, the municipal president (equivalent of mayor) of Apatzingán. He was arrested by Mexican authorities on 15 April 2014 for his alleged ties to organized crime. The city councilman Isidro Villanueva Moreno may also be his cousin too. His half brother and cousin of Plancarte Solís, Antonio Magaña Pantoja, was arrested by Mexican authorities in Apatzingán on 9 February 2014. His half brother Heliodoro Moreno Anguiano (alias "El Yoyo") was arrested by Mexican authorities in Apatzingán, Michoacán on 18 February 2014. His nephew Faustino Andrade González was arrested by the Mexican Federal Police in Apatzingán with four other suspected criminals on 5 June 2014.

During his tenure as leader of La Familia Michoacana, Moreno González reportedly gave loans to farmers, funded schools and churches, financed drainage projects, and carried out several aid campaigns to help out the disadvantaged in the state of Michoacán. This, along with the manpower of the organization, allowed him to get the support of several rural sectors in the state, where many served as informants and collaborators for the cartel. His wife was also known for organizing several self-help seminars in Apatzingán. The support of La Familia Michoacana is rooted in family connections and local communities in Michoacán, and in the supposed exploitation of its citizens by the government.

Organized crime

Although raised Catholic, Moreno González became a Jehovah's Witness during his time in the United States. In Apatzingán, Moreno González preached to the poor and always carried a Bible with him. With time, he won the loyalty of several locals, and many started to see him as a "messiah" for preaching religious principles and forming La Familia Michoacana, a drug cartel that posed as a vigilante group. When Carlos Rosales Mendoza was arrested in 2004, Moreno González ascended to the apex of La Familia Michoacana, a drug trafficking organization based in western Mexico, along with José de Jesús Méndez Vargas. In 2006, La Familia Michoacana broke relations with the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas, and Moreno González heralded the organization's independence when several of his gunmen tossed five human heads on a discothèque dance floor in Uruapan. Near the severed heads lay a message that read, "La Familia doesn't kill for money, doesn't kill women, doesn't kill innocents. Only those who deserve to die will die."

In 2009, the Mexican government published a list of its 37 most-wanted drug lords and offered a $2.2 million reward for information that led to Moreno González's capture. His three partners – José de Jesús Méndez Vargas, Servando Gómez Martínez and Dionisio Loya Plancarte – were also on the list. In 2010, he was sanctioned under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (sometimes referred to simply as the "Kingpin Act") by the United States Department of the Treasury for his involvement in drug trafficking. The act prohibited US citizens and companies from doing business with Moreno González, and froze virtually all his assets in the US.

Los Zetas broke off from the Gulf Cartel in 2010, after serving in the armed wing of the organization for more than a decade. But, in opposition to Los Zetas, González's cartel re-joined the Gulf Cartel and allied with the Sinaloa Cartel to fight them off. After that La Familia Michoacana became one of the fastest-growing cartels in Mexico's drug war. It stood out for its promotion of "family values" and religious agenda, unlike traditional cartels. Although deeply involved in the methamphetamine business, Moreno González's cartel diversified its criminal agenda by controlling numerous "counterfeiting, extortion, kidnapping, armed robbery, prostitution and car dealership" rings in Michoacán and nearby states. By mid-2009, La Familia had managed to establish a foothold in about 20 to 30 urban areas across the United States.

Moreno González required his men to carry a "spiritual manual" that he wrote himself, "[containing] pseudo-Christian aphorisms for self-improvement." In his "bible," Moreno González prohibited his men from consuming alcoholic beverages or other drugs, and stated that he would severely punish those who mistreated women. His writings encouraged the corporal punishment of thieves by beating them and making them walk naked with billboards in the city streets. He prohibited members of his cartel from consuming or selling methamphetamine in Michoacán, arguing that the drug was only to be smuggled into the US for American consumers. Moreno González justified drug trafficking by stating that La Familia Michoacana regulated the drug trade to prevent exploitation of the people. The book, sometimes known as "The Sayings of the Craziest One", also talks about humility, service, wisdom, brotherhood, courage, and God. His second book, titled "They Call Me The Craziest One", is 13 chapters long and talks about his life, idealism, the origins of La Familia Michoacana, their battle against Los Zetas, and his rationale for joining organized crime. The text reads like a diary and justifies his criminal activities under the rationale that just like others in Michoacán, the limited opportunities and his poor financial situation pushed him to get involved in the drug trade. In addition, González blamed the government for the existence of criminals.

As leader of La Familia Michoacana, González was in charge of forging alliances with other cartels. Reportedly, González met with several other high-ranking drug traffickers, including Fernando Sánchez Arellano of the Tijuana Cartel; Juan José Esparragoza Moreno of the Sinaloa Cartel; and Antonio Cárdenas Guillén of the Gulf Cartel. In these agreements, the cartels allowed La Familia Michoacana to move drugs freely in their territories in exchange for their support in fighting off rival gangs like Los Zetas. In 2008, Moreno González agreed to send armed men to help Joaquín Guzmán Loera and Ismael Zambada García fight off rival cartels, a favor which granted him access to the drug corridors in Sinaloa and Sonora. In addition, his friendship with the Gulf Cartel leader Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez allowed him access to the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.