EL TERRERO, Mexico (AP) – In the birthplace of Mexico’s vigilant “self-defense movement”, a new group has emerged that consists entirely of women carrying assault rifles and placing roadblocks to ward off what they say is a bloody invasion is the state of Michoacán by the violent Jalisco cartel.
Some of the four dozen women warriors are pregnant; some carry their little ones with them to the barricades. The rural area is traversed by dirt roads, fearing that Jalisco-armed men could infiltrate at a time when the murder rate in Michoacán has risen to levels not seen since 2013.
Many of the women vigilantes in the hamlet of El Terrero lost sons, brothers or fathers in battle. Eufresina Blanco Nava said her son Freddy Barrios, a 29-year-old lime picker, was abducted by suspected Jalisco cartel men in pickups; she had never heard of him since.
“They disappeared a lot of people, also a lot of young girls,” Blanco Nava said.
One woman, who asked for her name not to be used because she has family members in areas dominated by the Jalisco cartel, said the cartel kidnapped and disappeared her 14-year-old daughter, adding: ‘We go defend those we have left, the children we have left, with our lives. ”
“Our women are tired of seeing our children, our families disappear,” the vigilante said. “They take our sons, they take our daughters, our relatives, our husbands.”
This is partly why the women take up arms; men barely grow in Michoacan’s lime-growing hot country.
“As soon as they see a man carrying a gun, they take him away,” the woman said. “They disappear. We do not know if they have them (as recruits) or if they have already killed them. ”
Next to the barriers and roadblocks, the female supervisors have a homemade tank, a heavy truck with a weapon of steel plates on it. In other nearby towns, residents dug trenches over roads leading to the neighboring state of Jalisco to keep out the attackers.
Alberto García, a male vigilante, saw the medieval side of the war: he is from Naranjo de Chila, a city just across the river from El Terrero and the birthplace of Jalisco cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera. Garcia said he was driven out of the city by Jalisco cartel weapons because he refused to join the group.
“They also killed one of my brothers,” Garcia said. “They smashed him to pieces and my sister-in-law, who was eight months pregnant.”
El Terrero has long been dominated by the New Michoacán Family and Viagras gangs, while the Jalisco cartel controls the southern banks of the Rio Grande River. In 2019, the Viagras hijacked and burned half a dozen trucks and buses to block the bridge across the river to prevent Jalisco convoys from entering a surprise assault.
In the same year, in the next city, San Jose de Chila, the rival gangs used a church as an armed doubter to fend off an offensive of armed men from Jalisco. Stuck in the church tower and stuck next to the roof, they tried to defend the city from the invasion and leave the church full of bullet holes.
It is the sharp chasm where everyone is forced to take sides – either Jalisco, or the New Michoacán Family and the Viagras – that has convinced many that the El Terrero vigilantes are only infantry for one of the latter two gangs.
The vigilantes deny allegations that they are part of a criminal gang bitterly, although they clearly regard the Jalisco cartel as their enemy. They say they will be more than happy when the police and soldiers enter their jobs.
El Terrero is not far from the city of La Ruana, where the true self-defense movement was launched in 2013 by lime producer Hipolito Mora. After successfully ousting the Knights Templar cartel, Mora, like most of the original leaders, distanced itself from the so-called self-defense groups that remained, and is now a candidate for governor.
“I can almost assure you that they are not legitimate self-defense activists,” Mora said. “They are organized crime. … The few self-defense groups that exist have allowed themselves to be invaded; these are criminals disguised as self-defense. ”
Michoacán’s current governor, Silvano Aureoles, is more emphatic. “They are criminals, period. To cover themselves and protect their illegal activities, they call themselves self-defense groups, as if it were a passport to impunity. ‘
But in some ways, Mora says, the same conditions that gave rise to the original 2013 movement remain: authorities and police do not uphold the law and do not guarantee residents’ peace.
Sergio Garcia, a male member of the El Terrero vigilante group, says his 15-year-old brother was abducted and killed by Jalisco. Now he wants justice that the police have never given him.
“We are here for a reason to get justice by hook or crook, because if we do not do it, no one else will do it,” Garcia said.
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Associated Press author Mark Stevenson made a contribution from Mexico City.