Meet the Hitman and the Vigilante Who Say They're Trapped Inside Mexico's Drug Wars Falko Ernst - VICE News
go to original July 6, 2016

A hitman shows off his Klashnikov during breakfast (Falko Ernst/VICE News)

The beer-bellied man eating beef stew and tortillas in an empty warehouse claims that when he was 18 years old he wanted to be an agent for the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Today, 14 years later, he commands a unit of eight hitmen for the Caballeros Templarios, or Knights Templar, drug cartel in the Mexican state of Michoacán.

"Sometimes I ask myself if it was all worth it," he says of the war he has fought with other cartels, and former members of his own group who joined government-supported vigilante groups. "We should have just hidden the guns right away and fled. Fighting was pointless and many of my comrades would still be alive today."

An older and heavier fighter, who is putting away goat meat stew in the shade of a mango tree in a different part of the same region, was once also a Templario. Now he commands a group of former cartel members who claim to have left criminality behind, though they scoff at the idea that they might put down their weapons.

"If I don't carry a gun the bad guys will kill me," the vigilante leader says.

The stories of these two former allies and now enemies — who we will call Luis and Pancho and who both describe themselves as trapped in a cycle of killing — help explain why Michoacán remains among Mexico's most combustible regions nearly a decade into the country's drug wars that have killed well over 100,000 people.

...The region is not only suffering the scars of the violence of recent years but is also now home to at least 13 armed groups — most of them dominated by Templarios and former Templarios. The question for many is when, not if, the violence will escalate again.

Read the rest at VICE News

Related: Texas Hitman Trial Shines Needed Spotlight on Drug War's Effects on Our Daily Lives (News 4 San Antonio)

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!