The Vigilantes Fighting Mexico's Drug Cartels Are Now Actual Cops Alasdair Baverstock - VICE News
go to original May 16, 2014

Eduardo Suarez stood on one foot as he playfully balanced his government-issued automatic rifle on the tip of his farmer’s boot, looking around at his companions for applause. All that greeted him was the horror of his commanding officer, a federal police sergeant whose job it is to turn Suarez and his friends from small-town vigilantes into an crack anti-cartel fighting unit.

Startled by the furious disapproval of his drill sergeant, Suarez lost his balance as the loaded weapon toppled heavily from his foot into the dust of the training ground with a thud. Grinning sheepishly at his friends, who rather than cheer him had dived for cover, Suarez picked up the M16 and flicked the safety catch on. He then turned to me and said, “We’re here to keep our public safe.”

Until last week, Suarez and the others had banded together as a local self-defense outfit struggling to protect their hometown of Tepalcatepec from the vicious Knights Templar cartel. They were now in the middle of basic training after being given guns and uniforms by the government of the crime-ravaged state government of Michoacán, becoming the latest addition to the Mexican government’s war on drugs: a state-sanctioned Fuerza Rural (Rural Force).

“The fight here is worse than ever,” Sergio Rosales, one of the original founders of the self-defense movement in the local farming community, told VICE News. “We’re certainly lacking in organization, but we’ve never had formal training. We simply started resisting the Templars and now it’s become official.”

Read the rest at VICE News

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