Ditching the Cartel for the Militia: Switching Sides in Mexico's Drug War Manuel Rueda - Fusion
go to original March 3, 2014

As a 19-year-old avocado farmer, Andres Moreno has missed out on the industrial jobs that are said to be increasing Mexico’s middle class. But he’s already fought on both sides of the armed conflict that has gripped Mexico’s Michoacan state over the last year.

It started with a drug cartel. His family’s income hovers around Mexico’s minimum wage of $110 per month, yet each year when the avocado harvest came in, the Moreno family had to pay taxes to the Knights Templar, a cartel that runs extortion rackets on mining, farming and even tortilla shops in Michoacan.

“We had about 30 avocado trees, and every year we had to pay 3,000 pesos [$230],” Moreno said, as we spoke by a roadblock outside the city of Uruapan.

It didn’t end there. Moreno and several of his friends actually ended up working for the cartel that was ripping off their families.

“We joined to see if they would stop taxing us, but they kept on charging us” said Moreno, who worked as a “hawk” for the Knights Templar for four months. His job was to keep an eye on military convoys and troop deployments, and to alert his superiors of how many soldiers were approaching town, and when.

But when a vigilante group rose against the cartel last year in Moreno's hometown of Tancitaro, he decided to switch sides. Moreno deserted the Knights Templar and joined a local militia last November, along with two other friends who had relatives kidnapped or killed by the cartel.

Read the rest at Fusion

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