Nestora Salgado Jailed for Combatting Cartels: 'It Is a Sacrifice That Had to be Made' Jo Tuckman - The Guardian
go to original June 13, 2015

Nestora Salgado: ‘La Comandata’ organizes locals to rise up against organized crime in Olinalá, in the state of Guerrero. (Free Nestora Campaign/freenestora.org)

Nestora Salgado is not a woman who caves in easily.

A child bride who soon became a single mother of three, Salgado was still a teenager when she left her hometown in the mountains of southern Mexico to rebuild her life in the US.

Two decades later, she returned home to lead an armed rebellion against drug traffickers and corrupt local authorities – only to be accused of kidnapping and imprisoned.

Salgado spent 21 months in a high-security jail until a hunger strike galvanized international support for her case and helped secure her transfer last month to the medical wing of a more relaxed facility.

Now, in her first interview with the international press, Salgado argued that she was guilty of nothing more than helping her community stand up to the narcos and their corrupt political allies, and called on the Mexican government to release her and drop all the charges.

“I have no regrets about what I did, and I never will have any regrets,” she told the Guardian. “I am not a person who likes to confront the authorities, but in a place where dialogue is not possible, what else can you do?”

Salgado’s extraordinary story has unfolded amid a fierce debate about the role of armed vigilante groups that have sprung up across the country to fight the cartels, but have themselves been accused of murder, extortion and – in some cases – even acting as proxies for rival crime groups.

Read the rest at The Guardian

Related: Nestora Salgado's Condition Monitored by Government and Human Rights Groups (Mexico Voices)

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