Michoacan Vigilante Leaders Dismiss Spokesman Jose Manuel Mireles Mark Stevenson - Associated Press
go to original May 8, 2014

On Tuesday, May 6, Mireles Valverde posted a video in which he asked for direct dialogue with President Enrique Peña Nieto. In the video, he also stated that he fears for his life. (TresPuntoCero Michoacan)

Vigilantes who have spent the last year beating back a drug cartel in Mexico said Thursday they have dismissed their chief spokesman after he used unusually frank language to challenge President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Dashing vigilante leader Jose Manuel Mireles had become the public face of the "self-defense" movement in the western state of Michoacan, where the coalition of farmers, ranchers and laborers are fighting the Knights Templar cartel. The cartel had strangled the largely agricultural state with extortion demands, kidnappings and killings.

But Mireles has also become known as a loose cannon. Earlier this week he posted a video on social media sites challenging Pena Nieto to a dialogue, using colloquial language not usually directed at the president.

"You are a human being, just like me, maybe you've got a headache or you have to go to the bathroom," Mireles says on the video, in which he speaks to the absent Pena Nieto as 'tu," the informal form of address in Spanish.

Read the rest at ABC News

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