Knights Templar Cartel (Los Caballeros Templarios)

Successor to La Familia Michoacana, formed circa 2011 by Nazario Moreno and Servando Gómez Martínez (“La Tuta,” a former schoolteacher). The Knights Templar adopted medieval Templar imagery and issued a written doctrinal code. They controlled Michoacán’s economy comprehensively — drug production, extortion of avocado farms, lime orchards, mines, and the strategic port of Lázaro Cárdenas.

Their extreme extortion of the civilian population provoked an armed autodefensa (self-defense) uprising beginning in 2013, led by figures like Dr. José Manuel Mireles. The movement, combined with military operations and leadership arrests, largely dismantled the Knights Templar by 2015-2017, though CJNG filled much of the resulting power vacuum.