Mexico gov't faces vigilante monster it created

January 15, 2014 - 10:04 PM
Mexico Vigilantes

Federal police patrol the streets of Apatzingan, Mexico, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2014. Federal forces struggled to bring order to western Mexico as vigilantes battled a drug cartel. The unrest is in a region of Michoacan known as Tierra Caliente, a farming area where vigilante groups have been trying to drive out the Knights Templar drug cartel. After a weekend of firefights, the government announced Monday that it would take on security duties in the area. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

APATZINGAN, Mexico (AP) — Vigilantes who have challenged the government's authority in lawless Michoacan state held onto their guns Wednesday as federal authorities struggled to rein in a monster they helped create: citizen militias that rose among farmers and lime pickers to fight a drug cartel.

"They said they're not going to bother us, but they don't want us to keep advancing," said Hipolito Mora, head of the self-defense group in the town of La Ruana. The vigilantes now control the 17 municipalities that make up southwestern Michoacan — about a third of the entire state. "They don't want us to carry our guns in view."

Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong denied such an agreement was reached with the vigilantes.

"We made it clear that they cannot be armed," he said, though he said arresting vigilantes was not the objective.

Leaders of the self-defense groups are demanding the government arrest the top seven leaders of the Knights Templar drug cartel before they consider laying down their weapons.


This week, the government has beefed up federal police numbers in the rich farming region known as the Tierra Caliente, vowing to tame the area that has been controlled for at least three years by the quasi-religious Knights Templar. But the move comes after months of unofficial tolerance of vigilante groups that have taken up arms against the cartel, which started in drug trafficking and expanded to extortion and total economic control as the government failed to act.

With more firefights and violence over the weekend as vigilantes continued to advance, the tolerance of the armed citizen groups is being called a dangerous precedent inside the country and out. The U.S. State Department said Wednesday that the warring between vigilantes and the cartel is "incredibly worrisome" and "unclear if any of those actors have the community's best interests at heart."

"What they created was a Frankenstein that got out of control," Erubiel Tirado, a specialist in civil-military relations at Iberoamerican University, said of the situation, adding that the government has been allowing citizen groups to do its "dirty work."

So far the vigilantes have been more successful than the government, which has been sending troops to Michoacan at least since 2006, when former President Felipe Calderon launched his assault on drug trafficking. When legions of federal police arrived Tuesday to take over Apatzingan, the farming region's main city and a Knights Templar stronghold, residents simply shrugged.

"Police sent in from outside don't know where the criminals are," said the Rev. Gregorio Lopez, a Roman Catholic priest. "We know of 10 warehouses where they are hiding armed men. They aren't going to find them."



The vigilantes kill without qualms and take enemies into improvised jails.







Jose Miguel Vivanco of Human Right Watch called the situation "an improvised and even reckless government strategy."


Vigilante leaders vehemently deny this. They say they finance their battle with money that citizens formerly paid in extortion to the Knights Templar and now donate voluntarily to self-defense groups. They also say wealthy landowners in the rich farm country, a major producer of limes, avocados and mangos, have been financing their cause.

Vivanco fears the potential for abuse.

"It's not hard to imagine such groups quickly becoming involved in (assuming some haven't already) the very criminal activities — such as extortion and drug trafficking — that the government needs to eradicate," he said in written remarks sent to The Associated Press.


Associated Press writers Adriana Gomez Licon and Katherine Corcoran in Mexico City and Luis Alonso Lugo in Washington contributed to this report.