Nazario Moreno González

Nazario Moreno González (8 March 1970 – 9 March 2014), commonly referred to by his alias El Chayo ("Nazario" or "The Rosary") and/or El Más Loco ("The Craziest One"), was a Mexican drug lord who headed La Familia Michoacana before heading the Knights Templar Cartel, a drug cartel headquartered in the state of Michoacán.

He was one of Mexico's most-wanted drug lords.

Very few details are known of Moreno González's early life, but the authorities believe that religion played a major role in his upbringing.

Although born in Michoacán, Moreno González moved to the United States as a teenager, but fled back into Mexico about a decade later to avoid prosecution on drug trafficking charges.

Moreno González was born in the ranchería of Guanajuatillo in Apatzingán, Michoacán, Mexico at around 5:00 a.m. on 8 March 1970.

There are few details of Moreno González's upbringing, but religion may have played an important role in his early life.

His parents had 13 children (including Moreno González).

His father Manuel Moreno was reportedly an alcoholic and had several mistresses, and one day he left his family when Moreno González was still very young, forcing his mother to singlehandedly raise the whole family.

With their father gone, Moreno González and his siblings lived under the strict discipline of their mother.

According to his autobiography, Moreno González had a love-hate relationship with his mother; as a child, he was beaten by his mother for being troublesome and getting into fights.

In one occasion, he recalled that his mother once forced him to make his way back to his house by walking on his knees while keeping his arms stretched like a cross throughout the whole day for stealing an animal.

Such treatments helped him develop resentment as to partially explain his violent behavior as an adult, he argued.

He admitted, however, that he often got into fist fights with other kids from Guanajuatillo and the surrounding rancherías.

Moreno González recalled that he would not always win and that he once got into 10 fights in a single day.

His violent reputation as a child helped him earn the nickname El Más Loco ("The Craziest One")—which he held onto for the rest of his life—among his siblings and other kids from the area where he grew up.

He never attended school and was illiterate for some years of his early life.

He learned to read and write reportedly out of curiosity after seeing and hearing comic books and stories of Kalimán and Porfirio Cadena, El Ojo de Vidrio on the local radio station.

In his autobiography, Moreno González said that as a child he believed he had the superhuman ability of speaking telepathically with animals like Kalimán did in the comics.

He said he wanted to be a hero like the comic characters.

As a child, he was accustomed to seeing gunmen near his home, and played las guerritas ("war games") for fun.

While playing the game, he often pretended to be dead, only to say later on that he had been wounded in the game but that he had managed to survive.

Aged twelve he moved to Apatzingán and made a living by selling matches, peeling onions, working at a melon field, and throwing out the trash from several booths at a marketplace.

As a teenager in the late 1980s, Moreno González migrated illegally to the United States, settling in California, where he eventually began selling marijuana.

After some years, he moved to Texas and in 1994 was arrested for drug trafficking charges in McAllen.

Nearly a decade later in 2003, the US government charged him with conspiracy to distribute five tons of narcotics and issued an arrest warrant.

González fled back to Mexico.

Although raised Catholic, Moreno González became a Jehovah's Witness during his time in the United States.

In Apatzingán, Moreno González preached to the poor and always carried a bible with him.

With time, he won the loyalty of several locals, and many started to see him as a "messiah" for preaching religious principles and forming La Familia Michoacana, a drug cartel that posed as a vigilante group.

In 2004, the drug boss Carlos Rosales Mendoza was captured, and Moreno González, alongside José de Jesús Méndez Vargas, took control of La Familia Michoacana.

Unlike other traditional drug trafficking organizations in Mexico, his organization also operated like a religious cult, where its own members were given "bibles" with sayings and conduct guidelines.

Moreno González reportedly carried out several philanthropic deeds to help the marginalized in Michoacán.

Such deeds helped him craft an image of protector, saint, and Christ-like messianic figure among the poor, and gave La Familia Michoacana a level of influence among some natives.

The Mexican government reported that Moreno González was killed during a two-day gunfight with the Mexican federal police in his home state in December 2010.

After the shootout, however, no body was recovered.

Rumours thus persisted that Moreno González was still alive and leading the Knights Templar Cartel, the split-off group of La Familia Michoacana.

Four years later, on 9 March 2014, his survival was confirmed.

Mexican authorities located him again, this time in the town of Tumbiscatío, Michoacán, and attempted to apprehend him.

A gunfight ensued resulting in Moreno González's death.

Subsequent forensic examination confirmed his identity.