• FIGHT: Saturday’s attack against a service station and a bar in the town of Uriangato (pop. 62,000) where six people were killed could be linked to the fight between two organized crime groups in for the control of fuel theft business in the central state of Guanajuato, military and state sources said.
• MURDERS: The southwest corner of Guanajuato (where Uriangato is) is at the center of a violent dispute between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and the Cartel de Santa Rosa de Lima that has seen 4,078 murders this year, many of them linked to the criminal dispute.
• TAPS: Mexico’s state-owned petroleum company (Pemex) reported that the number of illegal fuel theft taps in Guanajuato were down around 32% during the first nine months of this year (948 taps) compared to the same period the year before (1,379 taps).
• TROOPS: In mid-December, the Mexican federal government dispatched 1,000 new National Guard troops to the southwest corner of Guanajuato to try to quell the criminal outburst; in the government’s plans, Uriangato was supposed to be a priority area for the National Guard.
