California Kids Enlist in Mexico Militias to Rout a Michoacan Drug Cartel Dudley Althaus - GlobalPost
go to original January 21, 2014

In this clip, Adolfo Silva, 20, raised in Santa Ana, Calif., speaks with GlobalPost's senior correspondent in Mexico, Dudley Althaus and The Washington Post's Joshua Partlow about life as a "self-defense" fighter in Mexico's western Michoacan state, where the Knights Templar cartel has dominated for years. (GlobalPost)

NUEVA ITALIA, Mexico — Moises Verduzco says he learned how to handle himself in a fight from his teen years running with a street gang near Los Angeles.

Now back home in western Mexico’s violent Michoacan state, Verduzco and other United States-bred youths are putting those lessons from the barrio to war against the Knights Templar criminal cartel.

Verduzco, 22, spent most of his life in the working-class city of Hawthorne, Calif., until the US deported him to Mexico a few years ago following a criminal conviction.

“This is way better,” he says, comparing his preferred vigilante post with California gangster life. “Here you are doing the right thing for your town. All a gang over there [in the States] is going to take you to is death or prison.”

Read the rest at GlobalPost

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