Beleaguered Mexican Police Hire Vigilantes

ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images

Beleaguered Mexican Police Hire Vigilantes

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

In a major policy-change, Mexican law enforcement authorities announced on January 27 that they would integrate once-illegal, Michoacán state vigilante groups into their ranks.

The announcement came at the same time the government issued a statement about the arrest of one of the bosses of the Knights Templar—a mystic, quasi-religious drug cartel that has dominated and extorted the western state of Michoacán for years.

Before this turnaround, the “autodefensa” vigilante groups had launched their most offensive attacks yet against the Knights Templar in early January, threatening to take one of its cities by force. This was a huge embarrassment for the Mexican government, which then demanded that the vigilantes lay down their arms. The vigilantes refused to cooperate and ended up clashing with the government. The clashes forced some local businesses into a self-imposed curfew. The Los Angeles Times said that this could have become a “mini-civil war.”

Now, vigilantes are cooperating with law enforcement officials. It’s being argued that the government has reluctantly accepted these groups as the lesser of two evils. Law enforcement officials are now relying on the self-defense groups’ expertise and familiarity with Michoacán’s rural towns. All included, the vigilante groups in Michoacán have as many as 20,000 members, though not all the different groups have agreed to cooperate with the government.

On February 9, hundreds of vigilantes flanked by military and federal police, entered the Knights Templar stronghold town of Apatzingán and set up checkpoints as part of their hunt for cartel members.

This development is largely seen as a sign of the Mexican government’s helplessness in curbing the drug war that has killed over 70,000 people. It is testament to the enormity of the drug problem and to the reality that no lasting solutions have yet been implemented. In his 2012 article titled “Mexico: Bordering on Collapse,” Trumpet columnist Brad Macdonald wrote that Mexico was essentially a failed state that’s coming unhinged. That the Mexican government is now institutionalizing vigilantes it so recently fought against shows how Mexico has failed, and just how big drug cartels have become in Mexico. Mr. Macdonald wrote,

Emboldened by billion-dollar bank accounts, vast recruitment pools of countless unemployed, desperate Mexicans, friendship with international crime organizations, support from major-league weapons suppliers, and, above all, an insatiable American demand for their supply, Mexico’s drug cartels in recent years have transformed into well-equipped, well-organized, technologically advanced, highly mobile, powerful armies!

As 19th-century Mexican President Porfirio Diaz once remarked, “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.” The drug problems of Mexico and the United States feed off each other in a vicious cycle. For more on the future of these two nations and on the viable solution to the drug war, read “Mexico: Bordering on Collapse” and “Beheading Mexico.”