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Mexico City (AFP) - Mexico's government has taken down almost the entire leadership of one of the country's most vicious drug cartels, but it can barely savor victory amid rising violence around the capital.

With the killing of Knights Templar gang leader Enrique "Kike" Plancarte on Monday, authorities have now captured or gunned down all but one of the chiefs of a gang that has tormented the western state of Michoacan.
But success against the Knights Templar may have come with a price, with security experts saying that Mexico City's suburbs could be affected by the "cucaracha" effect.
The theory goes that the dismantling of a criminal group causes gangsters to flee like cockroaches to neighboring regions, in this case the State of Mexico that wraps around most of the capital.
Plancarte, for instance, was killed by marines who tracked him down in the neighboring central state of Queretaro, which is not known for drug violence.
- 'Great success' -

 

A former "puntero" (informant) of the Templar Knights drug cartel poses during an intervie …

The government has deployed 10,000 troops and federal police to Michoacan, where civilians formed vigilante forces a year ago to combat the Knights Templar.
Plancarte's death came three weeks after Knights Templar founder Nazario Moreno, alias "El Chayo," was killed by troops in Michoacan on March 9.
With the capture of Plancarte's uncle in January, Servando "La Tuta" Gomez has been left as the sole remaining top leader of the cartel.
"It is a great success for the government because it is taking out the head of the criminal structure," Raul Benitez Manaut, a security expert at Mexico's National Autonomous University, told AFP.
Jaime Rivera, crime analyst at Michoacana University, said the government "could be close to a virtual dismantling of the Knights Templar organization."

  

Mexican marines and soldiers guard the surroundings of the morgue where the alleged corpse of Nazari …

The cartel may not completely disappear but "change its size and its capacity to impose its will on local and state authorities," Rivera said.
Like other cartels whose leaders have been killed or captured in the past, the Knights Templar may break up into small criminal gangs while others may spark a turf war for control of Michoacan's drug trade, he said.
President Enrique Pena Nieto's administration has delivered important blows to other major cartels.
Mexican marines captured the country's most wanted drug kingpin, Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, in his northwestern home state on February 22.

The authorities have also arrested or killed several top leaders of the Gulf and Zetas drug cartels, which have battled for control of drug routes in the northeast.

 

A member of the so-called self-defense groups, poses for a photo with an M-16 rifle in Antunez, Mich …

Mexico's drug cartels have engaged in bloody turf wars that have left some 80,000 people dead since 2006, when Pena Nieto's predecessor deployed the military against the gangs.
- Violence around capital -
Pena Nieto's government cites official figures showing a decline in homicides in the past year, but extortion rackets and kidnappings have shot up.
Officials say the success authorities have had in breaking down cartels have caused gang members to branch out to other activities.
The number of murders has surged this year in the State of Mexico, the country's most populous federal entity with 15 million people.

Kidnappings have also surged in the state of Morelos, just south of Mexico City, prompting Governor Graco Ramirez to publicly apologize to victims.

"In the case of Mexico State a 'cucaracha effect' has taken place," Benitez Manaut said, adding that Knights Templar members have moved in.

The state has seen 374 murders in the first two months of the year compared to 303 in the same period in 2013.

Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong announced Monday a new security strategy for Mexico State that includes increasing the number of federal security forces and firing corrupt local police officers.