Heavily Armed Vigilantes Disarming Local Corrupt Police

La Bonita is among the latest females to join the vigilante self defense group, Autodefensas, that is disarming corrupt local police and taking back their towns from Knights Templar and other drug cartel members in Mexico. 

La Bonita

Like hundreds of other Autodefensas enlistees, young La Bonita has vowed to no longer sit back and await corrupt state and federal officials to protect them from drug criminals.

The number of vigilantes enlisting is growing, including its female sector, those most impacted by human rights atrocities associated with the War on Drugs and its Fast and Furious arm.

Across the road is Joel Gutiérrez, 19, a U.S.-born citizen who grew up in Mexico. He says that last year, seven members of his family, including his parents, grandparents and three cousins, were kidnapped by the Knights Templar and weren’t seen again.

He escaped to California but returned to “work for a free Michoacán with justice,” he says, adding, “and hopefully seek revenge for what I lost.”

Tencha, who doesn’t want her full name used for fear of retribution, encourages her daughter to leave for Dallas and not to worry about leaving her behind.
“Mexico isn’t for the young anymore,” Tencha says. “The young need a future to believe in.”  (Alfredo Corchado, Dallas News)

Filmmaker Gregory Nava encapsulated this in his film, Border Town, with Jennifer Lopez and Martin Sheen.

After living in the United States, La Bonita returned to Michoacan, her home state, and found it controlled by drugs barons.

She, like millions of Mexicans, face three choices: 1) risk their lives at home in bloody battles fueled by United States’ trading its weapons for Mexican drugs, 2) risk their lives by attempting to flee to the United States, and now, 3) risk their lives by standing their gound as vigilantes.

Like thousands of other Mexicans persecuted in and by the United States government, La Bonita has chosen the latter of the three options. She took up arms and joined the vigilantes.

“[The drug cartels] took my sister-in-law when she was four months pregnant,” she said.

“When the self-defence groups were formed I decided to join. Some of the girls here came to be with their boyfriends. But me? I came for this,” she said, patting her R-15 automatic rifle.

Asked if she’d killed anyone, she laughed.

“I don’t know. I just shoot.”

The members of the national self defense group, ‘autodefensas,’ stormed Paracuaro in the drug war-torn Michoacan state, in an attempt to seize control of the town, removing control from the feared Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar) drug cartel.

The battle was only one in a long-running number of those in the new drug war tha includes Mexico’s southwest gangs and local residents.

Vigilantes now control 17 municipalities that make up southwestern Michoacan, about one-third of the state.

U.S. Bogus War on Drugs and its right hand, Fast and Furious

The United States government has fueled Mexican drug violence in its bogus war on drugs, according to former secret service agent John Carman, who spoke with Deborah Dupré. 

Carman saw the deals go down at the border, U.S. weapons traded for Mexican drugs.

Border patrol officials looked the other way and told Carman to do the same, he said, recounting his days as a border patrol agent before he blew the whistle.

Carman documented and reported on corruption related to Hillary Clinton’s scandalous Fast and Furious program.

Higher ups had warned Carman to stop complaining but he refused. Instead he continued to take his reports about U.S. officials’ border corruption to higher levels. They nailed him.

Carman joined the ranks of Falsely Imprisoned Persons, FIPs. After a set-up, he was incarcerated.

He was silenced, locked away, while the U.S. dirty border trading continued supplying weapons to Mexican drug gangs and hiding the flow of drugs into the U.S., onto the streets where ultimately, low-level users were nabbed and imprisoned in the multi-billion dollar scheme.

If blowing the whistle on U.S. support for Mexican violence concerned the Scretary of the State and American agencies meant to be working for justice, vigilantes taking an armed stand to end the bloody “War on Drugs” game is even more concerning for it.

The U.S. State Department says ”warring between vigilantes and the cartel is ‘incredibly worrisome’ and that it is  ’unclear if any of those actors have the community’s best interests at heart.’” 

Corporate-government controlled lock step mainstream news articles reporters are branding the vigilantes, taking their power back from drug cartels as, ”vigilante monsters.” 

NPR titled its piece on this, Mexican Gov’t Faces Vigilante Monster It Created.

Wealthy landowners’ support

“The vigilantes’ success in driving the heavily armed criminals from their towns and villages is proving so relentless, that Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has been forced to deny his government has allowed self-defence groups to grow,” reports the Express.

“There are a lot of businessmen financing this movement,” said the Reverend Gregorio Lopez, a Roman Catholic priest in the city of Apatzingan, which is still under cartel rule.

Hipolito Mora, one of the self-defence movement founders, said he’s already contacted one well-heeled family that fled to Guadalajara to tell them they can reclaim their large ranch.

“The rich have lost their fear, and they are approaching us,” Mora said. “They are joining the movement.”

Sources, Personal interviews, AP, NPR, Russia Today Mexico

Photo Credit: Autodefensas, Facebook