Mexico’s drug cartels, now hooked on fuel, cripple nation’s refineries

The first call, from someone claiming to belong to the Michoacan Family drug cartel, came in February 2015.

“They said they knew who I was and where I lived,” said Alberto Arredondo, who got the call at work as a pump technician at an oil refinery in the central Mexican city of Salamanca. “They wanted information.”

At first, Arredondo hung up.

“But they were insistent,” he said, calling back and demanding details of when fuels would be pumped and through which pipelines.

Over the next two years, Arredondo said, he would be hounded, kidnapped, pistol-whipped and stabbed so severely . . .