Mexico President: Party Led to Drug Lord's Death

Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Tuesday that a large party led to the demise of a drug cartel chief, who was killed in a shootout with federal police.

The La Familia gang invited hundreds of people to a party last week in the western city of Apatzingan and didn't bother to keep it a secret, Calderon said in an interview with W Radio.

Federal police learned about it and the shootout broke out when they arrived to investigate, he said. The government says that La Familia leader Nazario Moreno, nicknamed "The Craziest One," was killed in battles that lasted two days and spread to key parts of Michoacan state, with gunmen blockading roads with burning vehicles.

"What happened those days is that we gave La Familia cartel the biggest blow in its history," Calderon said. "With a certain amount of insolence, they organized a party, a gathering of hundreds of their people. ... Everyone found out about the party."

The government says cartel gunmen fled with their dead during the shootouts, and Moreno's body has not been recovered.

La Familia has been the most flamboyant of Mexico's drug cartels. The gang claims it is trying to protect Michoacan — Calderon's home state — from other cartels and common criminals, a message it touts in banners and even in occasional interviews with the news media.

The gang has not bothered to lower its profile after Moreno's reported death. Sympathizers — some with small children — have marched repeatedly in Apatzingan and the state capital of Morelia, carrying signs supporting the capo and demanding the withdrawal of federal forces.

Moreno, 40, was considered the ideological leader of La Familia, setting a code of conduct for members that prohibits using hard drugs or dealing them within Mexican territory.

He reputedly handed out Bibles and money to the poor, and wrote a religiously tinged book of values for the cartel, sometimes known as "The Sayings of the Craziest One."

The gang, specializing in methamphetamine, is also known as one of Mexico's most vicious. La Familia emerged as an independent organization in 2006, announcing its split from the Gulf cartel when it rolled five severed heads into a nightclub in the city of Uruapan.

Soon afterward, Calderon deployed thousands of federal troops and soldiers into Michoacan, a crackdown he quickly extended to other cartel strongholds in northern and western Mexico. Several top drug lords have been brought down but gang violence has soared to unprecedented levels, claiming more than 28,000 lives in four years.

"I'm a Michoacano and the situation of the state hurts," Calderon said. "We cannot allow the law of a cartel to rule a state."