Drug cartel leader held, Mexico says

Fugitive was said to be last of group’s leaders still at large.

MEXICO CITY — Longtime fugitive drug lord Servando “La Tuta” Gomez, founding commander of the notorious La Familia cartel, which controlled a large chunk of western Mexico and its booming methamphetamine industry, was captured by federal police early Friday, authorities said.

Gomez and La Familia dominated the western agricultural state of Michoacan for years, morphing more recently into another cult-like organization calling itself the Knights Templar. He was the last of the group’s leaders still on the lam.

A teacher by training, Gomez seemed to delight in recent months in releasing videos of his meetings — in his not-so-secret hideout — with local officials, whom he managed to implicate in protecting him.

His hold on the state began to slip when vigilante “self-defense” militias, complaining that the government could not protect its citizens, rose up against the traffickers, who terrorized the population through kidnappings, extortion and intimidation.

He was captured without resistance in the Michoacan capital of Morelia, 180 miles west of Mexico City, in an operation by federal police, authorities said. Reforma newspaper reported he was detained while dining on hot dogs at around 3 a.m. in downtown Morelia.

Gomez, 49, was one of Mexico’s most wanted fugitives, and his capture will be a point in favor of the embattled government of President Enrique Pena Nieto, muchcriticized of late for failing to confront the country’s waves of violence and insecurity. The government had offered a bounty for Gomez equivalent to about $2 million.

Michoacan and La Familia, and later the Knights Templar, have long held a place in Mexico’s deadly war with drug traffickers. As the home state of former President Felipe Calderon, it is the place where he first launched military forces to combat the cartels in late 2006, a tactic that would come to dominate his administration and claim tens of thousands of lives.