Boost for President Peña Nieto in fight against warring drug gangs and in wake of public revulsion over abduction of trainee teachers

Mexico has captured the country’s most wanted drug lord, Servando “La Tuta” Gómez, police have said, in a boost for President Enrique Peña Nieto as he struggles to contain gang violence.

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The 49-year-old was the prime target of Peña Nieto’s drive to regain control of Michoacan, a western state wracked by clashes between Gómez’s Knights Templar cartel and heavily armed vigilantes trying to oust them.

His arrest comes a year after the capture of Mexico’s most notorious drug lord, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, the head of the Sinaloa cartel, one of the world’s most powerful drug-smuggling gangs.

Peña Nieto has been seeking to quell widespread public outrage over violence, corruption and impunity in Mexico after the abduction and apparent massacre of 43 trainee teachers by corrupt police in league with gang members.

A police spokesman said federal police captured Gómez in Morelia, Michoacan’s state capital, after months of intelligence work. “He will be brought to Mexico City in the coming hours to make a declaration,” he said.

Gómez was arrested at a house without any shots being fired, local media reported. Last week, police seized properties in the area and arrested a handful of people connected to Gómez. Local media reported that the earlier operation had led to the arrest of the drug boss. Police also arrested a number of other people with him.

Since the Mexican government began a military crackdown in 2007 on drug gangs, more than 100,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence. The authorities had placed a bounty of 30m pesos (£1.3m) on Gómez’s head.

Gómez went from schoolteacher to one of Mexico’s most ruthless and wanted cartel leaders, dominating for a time the country’s lucrative methamphetamine trade and taking control of his home state through extortion, intimidation and coercion of business and political leaders.

Though it started in drugs, his gang even took over the state’s international port, Lázaro Cárdenas, and made millions from illegal mining of ore.

Gómez was a talkative and public cartel leader, a rarity among capos known for keeping their silence. He gave a British television crew an interview in January even as the government was mounting a major assault on his gang that eventually led to its demise. He told the reporter his illegal work was all about business.

“As we told you, we are a necessary evil,” Gómez is seen telling a group of townspeople on tape. “Unfortunately, or fortunately, we are here. If we weren’t, another group would come.”

Gómez’s long reign was untouched by several attempts by the federal government to send troops and police to regain control of the state, and only began to unravel when a band of vigilantes decided in early 2013 to take up arms and do what the local government would not do.

The “self-defence” groups, including farmers and ranchers as well as alleged rivals and former cartel members, marched through the Knights’ territory, taking town after town and finally forcing the federal government in late 2013 to mount a real offensive to find Gómez and other Knights Templar leaders.

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Gómez accused them of being sent by a rival cartel in neighbouring Jalisco state.

In truculent videotaped statements, Gómez accused the federal government of supporting his rivals and offered to strike peace deals with authorities. The celebrated outlaw popped up often on the radio and TV.

The only other fugitive drug lord known to speak to the press is Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the co-leader of the Sinaloa cartel who has granted a single interview.

Born on 6 February 1966, Gómez started as a teacher in the Michoacan hill town of Arteaga, and was still listed on a payroll at a school there until at least 2009. Hence his additional nickname of “El Profe”, The Professor.

In his hometown, some residents praised him as a humble man who ambled about in sandals and would give poorer people money for food, clothing and medical care when they were in a jam. They said he mediated in disputes such as a traffic accident or child support battles.

Gómez apparently started out transporting marijuana before becoming in the mid-2000s a top leader of La Familia, another cult-like cartel and predecessor of his Knights Templar. He continued his populist tendencies while acting as a spokesman for that gang, which was led by Nazario “El Chayo” Moreno González, Jesus “El Chango” (The Monkey) Mendez Vargas and Dionicio “El Tio” (The Uncle) Loya.

La Familia initially portrayed itself as a crusader gang, protecting communities from the Zetas cartel. Witnesses say La Familia trained its recruits in ultra-violent techniques such as beheading and dismembering victims, and it frequently ambushed soldiers and federal police.

A US Justice Department indictment in 2009 said Gómez might be behind the murder of 12 Mexican federal law enforcement officers whose bodies were found in July of that year while he still operated under La Familia.

After the government claimed that the cartel’s top leader, Moreno, had been killed in a shootout with police in late 2010, the gang weakened. One faction sought help from its old foe, the Zetas. Gómez turned on his old bosses and started the Knights Templar. Many claimed he continued to work with Moreno, who they said was not dead. The authorities have never found his body.

As the leader of the Knights Templar, Gómez claimed he was a “high-class” criminal. He issued pocket-size booklets that were distributed in buses in 2011 as the cartel sought to create a social base. The “code of conduct” claimed it was fighting a war against poverty, tyranny and injustice, while being blamed for murders, extortion and drug trafficking.

In an interview with MundoFox, News Corp’s Spanish-language network, Gómez acknowledged he had committed many crimes but said he had never killed an innocent person. He also said he was not scared of dying, because he would choose being killed over going to jail.

His videotaped speeches hit hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. One of them shows him sitting at a desk. On the wall behind are portraits of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa and Mexico’s flag. On the table is the manifesto of Moreno.

In his speeches, Gómez seemed fearless and daring, but rambled cynically about his quest to give money to the poor while brutally punishing his foes. He often came off preachy and messianic.

He accused the government of losing sight of the rule of law in Michoacan. He called the Knights Templar a “brotherhood” and boasted of its Robin Hood-like quality, saying the gang’s members were born to protect the people and give them back what was rightly theirs.

The folksy and charismatic cartel leader of puffy cheeks and large nose, known to wear a baseball cap and a grey-haired goatee, was a fugitive also wanted in the US for conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine.

Associating with Gómez made for national scandals. He accused federal senator Luisa María Calderón, sister of then president Felipe Calderón, of seeking his support through a staff worker when she ran for governor of Michoacan in 2011. He showed a video of himself talking to a man who he said worked for Calderón, but her party said the man wasn’t affiliated.

A phone conversation between a federal congressman and the suspected trafficker was taped, leaked and then broadcast by a radio station, showing they expressed support for each other. The lawmaker, César Godoy, was charged with aiding drug trafficking and money laundering and is now a fugitive.