| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico 
Some Mexicans March Again for Slain Drug Lord
 Associated Press
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December 14, 2010
| | A man holds up a sign that reads in Spanish "Nazario will always live in our hearts," referring to Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, the late leader of the drug trafficking organization "La Familia," during a demonstration in Apatzingan, Mexico, Sunday Dec. 12, 2010. Moreno was killed on Thursday in Apatzingan during two days of shootouts between gunmen and federal police, according to the government. (AP Photo/Primera Plana) | |
Morelia, Mexico — Some Mexicans demonstrated in the streets Monday for a third straight day to show support for a slain drug lord who reputedly gave money and preached religion to the poor.
More than 100 people marched through the Michoacan state capital, Morelia, holding signs lauding Nazario Moreno, the chief of La Familia cartel who the government says was killed during two days of battles with federal police last week.
One sign urged Moreno's reputed successor - Jose de Jesus Mendez - "to go hard after the government but don't involve civilians."
A caravan of cars spray-painted with pro-La Familia messages also drove from Morelia to the lake town of Patzcuaro. One sign read "Long live the Familia Michoacana, Out with the PF (Federal Police)."
State Public Safety Secretary Manuel Ruiz insisted the majority of citizens were against the marches.
In Mexico City, a legislative disciplinary commission voted unanimously Monday to rescind the immunity from prosecution of a fellow congressmen accused of links to La Familia.
Congressman Cesar Godoy Toscano has denied the accusations, but tapes have surfaced in which he allegedly chats with a man identified as a leader of the cartel.
Godoy Toscano already faces federal charges for allegedly protecting La Familia, but congressmen in Mexico are granted immunity from arrest while in office.
The panel's vote has to be affirmed by a vote by the lower house. Technically, such a vote would not remove the legislator from office, but would make him liable to arrest. If acquitted, he could return to office.
In Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, doctors at a state-run clinic staged a one-day strike Monday to protest high levels of violence, threats and extortion that have accompanied bloody drug-gang turf battles in the city.
Outside the clinic, medical personnel hung banners reading "Stop the Impunity".
One doctor was killed in July by a car-bomb targeting police, while he was tending to a victim. Others have been threatened or kidnapped.
State prosecutors in the north-central state of Guanajuato said eight businessmen had disappeared after going on a hunting trip in the nearby state of Zacatecas.
They said a ninth man who was on the trip and escaped told prosecutors that local police in Zacatecas had detained the hunters, who were wearing camouflage hunting clothes.
The survivor told prosecutors the police turned the group over to a masked, armed gang who took them into the hills, shot them to death and set fire to their bodies Dec. 7. The gang released a youth who was with the hunters, and the ninth man survived by jumping from a truck and running away.
Investigators were still searching for the bodies.
Drug gangs, especially the extremely violent Zetas gang, operate in the area.
In the southern state of Guerrero, state police reported that four young men aged between 20 and 23 were killed and at least three other people were wounded in a gunbattle near the state capital, Chilpancingo.
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