Word: familia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...call appears to be the latest attempt to take the moral high ground by a quasi-religious drug cartel that has become one of the most dangerous threats to Mexican security forces. The caller identified himself as Servando Gomez, head of a narcotics mafia that has baptized itself La Familia Michoacana. The gangsters, who had bought ads in newspapers and given an interview to a leading Mexican magazine, claim that although they traffic drugs, they protect their local community and purport to be devout Evangelical Christians. All members are disciplined to abstain from narcotics themselves and care for their homes...
Federal agents seized one copy of La Familia's Bible in a raid last year. Quoted in local newspapers, the scripture paints an ideology that mixes Evangelical-style self-help with insurgent peasant slogans reminiscent of the Mexican Revolution. "I ask God for strength and he gives me challenges that make me strong; I ask him for wisdom and he gives me problems to resolve; I ask him for prosperity and he gives me brain and muscles to work," Moreno writes, using terms that could be found in many Christian sermons preached from Mississippi to Brazil. But on the next...
...targeting corrupt officials plaguing Mexico's bloody struggle against drug gangs. In a string of raids on May 26, security forces arrested 10 mayors, a judge and 16 others believed to have ties to narcos. The sweeps took place in the western state of Michoacán, home to La Familia, a fast-growing cartel. More than 7,000 people have died in Mexico's drug war since...
Take, for instance, Altagracia Familia, a former schoolteacher in the Dominican Republic who now lives in New York City and sells empanadas and coconut sweets. Her vending cart used to be wooden, but then she upgraded to metal. Not by way of a loan, though. Familia slowly saved profits and bought a new cart once she had amassed $7,000. What she spent her Grameen loan on is much less flashy: ingredients and cart repairs...
That's not to say the money isn't helpful. But according to Familia, one of the main things she gets from Grameen is something else: "their interest is in developing women workers," she says through a translator. "Women share their ideas and help each other...