Support Grows for Washington State Grandmother-Turned-Militia-Leader Held in Mexico Kamna Shastri - The Seattle Globalist
go to original June 20, 2014

Nestora Salgado addresses the community police force she lead in Olinalá, Mexico, prior to her arrest last year. (Youtube)

After almost a year in a Mexican prison, a wave of political pressure is gathering for the release of Renton resident Nestora Salgado.

Salgado is a naturalized citizen and U.S. passport holder who moved to Renton from Olinalá in the state of Guerrero, Mexico in 1991. She was arrested by Mexican federal police last August after returning to Guerrero to head up a community police force fighting drug cartel violence and political corruption.
“My mom is a person with strong morals and a huge heart.” Salgado’s daughter Grisel Rodriguez said through tears at the press conference, where she was also joined by faculty from the Seattle University International Human Rights Clinic, which is offering legal representation in the case.

A Los Angeles Times article late last year described how, on visits back to Olinalá, Salgado witnessed her childhood home taken over and “terrorized’ by a drug cartel called Los Rojos. Community members claimed the cartel was backed by the town’s elected officials.

The murder of a taxi driver who would not yield to the cartel’s demands to pay ‘protection fees’ was the final straw leading to the organization of Olinalá’s community police force, which Salgado spearheaded.

The group invoked the Mexican Constitution and Guerrero State Law saying that indigenous communities are empowered create self-governing safety institutions if the government fails to ensure their safety. At first the militia, one of several that sprang up around Guerrero and Michoacán in recent years, was celebrated as a grassroots solution to increasing lawlessness in the area.

But when they started making arrests, first of three local teens for dealing cocaine, and later of a city official for cattle theft, things went south.

Read the rest at The Seattle Globalist

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