Mexican police say drug lord killed 20 townspeople

MEXICO CITY — Authorities said Thursday the massacre of 20 townspeople in southern Mexico appears to have been the work of a drug lord who used social media to try to blame a rival gang.

The new revelations illustrate how Mexican drug cartels are increasingly using social media to apportion blame for attacks and mislead authorities and the public.

Ricardo Mejia, Mexico’s assistant secretary of public safety, said Thursday that authorities had raided five properties belonging to the Hurtado brothers, who operate under the name Familia Michoacana cartel. Those raids found ranches, luxury homes and a menagerie including a tiger, a zebra, antelopes and stuffed wild animals.

The Oct. 5 attack in the town of Totolapan killed the town’s mayor, his father and 18 other men. Responsibility for the attack was originally claimed in a video attributed to a near-extinct gang known as the Tequileros. Men in the dark, shadowy video said they carried out the attack and were retaking Totolapan.

The Tequileros had long terrorized the town, but had been chased out years ago by a vigilante group believed to have been backed by the Familia Michoacana, which dominates the area.

José Alfredo Hurtado, who leads the Familia Michoacana along with his brother Johnny, posted a video several days later saying he was the intended target of the shooting and had narrowly escaped.

“The attack was aimed at me,” Hurtado said describing the events in which gunmen entered the town and opened fire on a meeting the mayor was holding with other officials — apparently members of a vigilante group.

But Mejia said Thursday that the capo’s own group probably killed them.

“According to a serious line of investigation, it was they who carried out the mass execution and tried to make it appear as if another group,” Mejia said.

Local media had reported that the Hurtado brothers may have been upset because the Totolapan mayor and the group of vigilantes he apparently headed had rejected the capos’ choice of another man to lead the town.

Hours after the Oct. 5 shootings, a group of armed men appeared in a video filmed around dusk, claiming to be the Tequileros and saying they were retaking control of Totolapan, which is near the mountains where much of Mexico’s opium poppy crop is grown.

With poor lighting and sound, the Tequileros video was unlike the more slickly produced cartel videos that have become the norm, in which well-armed groups of masked cartel gunmen regularly threaten rivals…