Guadalajara -
U.S. motorcyclist and adventurer Harry Devert has been missing for more than two months. He was last heard from on Jan. 25, supposedly headed for the Pacific coast town of Zihuatanejo in Guerrero state, due south of the Michoacán capital of Morelia, along Mexico's famous Costa Grande. Devert was aboard a green Kawasaki with New York tags. Brazil was his final destination. Mexico opens investigation into U.S. citizen missing in Michoacán, as long silence grows increasingly ominous.
On Friday a citizen militia force in La Unión, Guerrero - Los Pueblos Libres, or "The Free People" - hung banners along roads running between Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán and Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, claiming that Devert had been kidnapped and executed by bosses of a regional drug cartel, Los Guerreros (The Warriors). La Unión, which sits very close to the border between the two states, is marked on the map above.
The autodefensas offered no details to support their claims. Authorities in both states are scouring a wide area for any sign of Devert.
Los Guerreros is a group which splintered from Los Caballeros Templarios, the dominant cartel in Michoacán, and forged an alliance with the Guadalajara based Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), a powerful organized crime group commonly known as Los Matazetas, or "Zeta killers." CJNG is engaged in a take no prisoners war with the Templarios (Federals capture key Matazeta operative in suburban Guadalajara), and has dispatched operatives into Michoacán to eliminate its members. 20 Michoacán police officers charged as "Zeta killers".
The Costa Grande is a region of increasing insecurity, as drug cartels and autodefensas struggle for yardage in communities where law enforcement is minimal or nonexistent. Federal troops kill eight gunmen in Guerrero violence.
The La Unión militia is not the first to claim that Harry Devert is dead. On Feb. 21 the Mexico City newspaper Excélsior reported similar allegations in a story which cited confidential law enforcement sources in Michoacán and Guerrero.
Excélsior said that a local boss of Los Guerreros, a man known as The Tiger, had been seen aboard Devert's motorcycle in the vicinity of Zihuatanejo soon after Devert was last heard from. According to the paper The Tiger suspected that Devert, who was said to be fluent in English, French and Spanish, was a U.S. Drug Enforcement agent.
Officials in Michoacán and Guerrero have not commented on that report or the one by the La Unión citizen militia.
Harry Devert has not been heard from for 65 days
Mar. 22 - PAN boss: "There's no respect for life in Michoacán, nor a government"
Mar. 18 - Michoacán Templarios stole human organs from child victims, to sell and to eat
Mar. 5 - Mexican Human Rights Comm'n. says there's no local law in Michoacán
Feb. 17 - Michoacán belongs to organized crime: 55% of Mexicans
© MGR 2014. All rights reserved. This article may be cited or briefly quoted with proper attribution or a hyperlink, but not reproduced without permission.
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