MEXICO CITY -- With the arrest Servando "La Tuta" Gomez, the Mexican government made another big score, having torn through its list of most-wanted drug lords in recent years.
Still, no one expects drug trafficking or violence to decrease after Friday's capture of Gomez, a former grade-school teacher whose Knights Templar cartel once terrorized the western state of Michoacan.
Crime only will shift around as the now weakened cartel regroups, or even splinters, as has happened with some of Mexico's drug gangs after the killings or capture of top leaders. Others continue business as usual after top leadership hits.
"Dismantling them was a necessary step, but that does not end the problem of insecurity," Alejandro Hope, a Mexico City-based security analyst, said of the Knights Templar. "The next part is more complicated. There are still small groups, remnants, which will be extorting, robbing and perhaps even producing methamphetamine."
Gomez, 49, was arrested early Friday as he left a house in Morelia, the capital of Michoacan, along with eight bodyguards and associates toting a grenade launcher, three grenades, an Uzi machine pistol and assault rifles, National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said.
They were taken without a shot fired after a months-long intelligence stakeout, in which Gomez's associates were identified when they gathered for his birthday Feb. 6 with cakes, soft drinks and food.
Rubido said the key break came months ago when agents identified one of Gomez's most-trusted messengers, a group of people who apparently supplied him with food, clothing and medicine when he earlier hid out in the remote mountains of his home state.
Gomez's quasi-religious criminal band once exercised what Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong called "absolute control" over Michoacan. It orchestrated politics, controlled commerce, dictated rules and preached a code of ethics around devotion to God and family, even as it murdered and plundered. But the cartel lost power when the federal government took over the state to try to restore order in January 2014 after vigilantes began fighting the gang.
Other Knights Templar leaders were captured or killed over the past year as authorities kept up the hunt for Gomez, who had a $2 million reward on his head.
Pena Nieto's government, which took office a little over two years ago, has been aggressive in capturing drug lords, including the biggest capo, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, a year ago.
In all, 10 top leaders of various cartels have been captured or killed in the last six years, six of them under Pena Nieto. Of Mexico's top criminal leaders, only Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada of the Sinaloa Cartel remains at large.
"We are advancing, we are responding, we are having major apprehensions of the most wanted, most dangerous criminals," Pena Nieto said Friday, congratulating and thanking the federal forces that helped apprehend Gomez. "Overall, we continue to work toward a Mexico of peace that we all want."
But the arrests, even those hitting the powerful and international Sinaloa Cartel, seem to have had little effect on the flow of drugs. Seizures at the U.S.-Mexico border have fluctuated since 2010, when 2.7 million pounds were seized, to a high of 3.1 million in 2011 and down to 2.3 million pounds in 2014, according to U.S. government figures, the only way to estimate flows of drugs.
"I have the impression that this is another detention of no judicial consequence," Edgardo Buscaglia, a cartel expert and senior scholar at Columbia University, said of Gomez's arrest. "It's only meant to reorder the map to reach a Mafioso kind of peace outside the justice system to improve the image of the administration of Enrique Pena Nieto."
In Morelia, newspaper vehicles rolled through the streets with loudspeakers announcing a special edition about Gomez's arrest.
"It's very good news that they have detained La Tuta, but I don't know if it will solve Michoacan's problems," said Jesus Osorio, a taxi driver. "There will still be crime."
Information for this article was contributed by Mark Stevenson, Alberto Arce, Peter Orsi and Maria Verza of The Associated Press.
A Section on 03/01/2015