Plans Made to Economically Suffocate Michoacan Cartels, Make Alliance with Vigilantes Patricia Rey Mallen - IBTimes
go to original February 11, 2014

After a year of battles with a powerful drug gang, vigilantes in Mexico's western Mihoacan state have entered the Knights Templar Cartel stronghold of Apatzingan. They were pushed into the city with the help of police and soldiers. Al Jazeera's Adam Raney reports from Mexico City. (Al Jazeera English)

MEXICO CITY - Desperate times call for desperate measures: that must be the thinking of Alfredo Castillo Cervantes, the Mexican federal government's commissioner in Michoacán, as he tries to stop the chaos that has embroiled the western state. Civilians trying to protect their land from the criminal cartels that control the area, official forces attempting to calm the street war, distrust among them all - the situation has reached unparalleled proportions.

Castillo does not call the civilian vigilantes criminals, like many in the Mexican political and media elite have been doing. In fact, the politician wants them as allies, as their help would be invaluable in the fight against the Templarios, the main crime cartel that operates in Michoacán, born in 2011 from the remnants of legendary drug trafficking outfit La Familia.

Castillo said he believes that he can count on the “autodefensas,” as vigilantes call themselves. The vigilantes, informal security groups composed of and run by citizens, have been on an open war against the Templarios for the control of their land for almost a year. The situation escalated to unsustainable proposrtions at the end of 2013, prompting the intervention of the government.

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