Self-Defense Groups Strengthen and Multiply Throughout the State of Michoacan Francisco Castellanos J. and Jose Gil Olmos - Proceso
go to original November 26, 2013

TEPALCÁTEPEC, Michoacán - Nine months ago the first citizen self-defense groups burst into the Tierra Caliente [Hot Land, hills along Pacific Coast]. Today they have a presence in nineteen municipalities, a sure sign that the authorities cannot stop the insecurity in the state.

In a report, the state government itself recognizes the crisis enveloping Michoacán, in which forty-seven of the one-hundred thirteen municipal communities have organized their own bodies of citizen defense, while in others another fifty white guards proliferate, thus becoming the state with the greatest social instability in the entire country.

Aides of Governor Fausto Vallejo are concerned about the existence of police and community guards in major cities to protect residents from the spiral of violence. Some even fear that municipalities of the Tierra Caliente, the Purépecha plateau and the coast, who in 2011 chose arm themselves, might try to separate themselves from Michoacán.

Nevertheless, José Manuel Mireles Valverde, member of the General Council of Community Self-Defense Forces, tempers the mood. He says there is no intention of separation. The purpose, he clarifies, is to clean the state of the organized crime that has been embedded in the three levels of government [local, state, federal]. However, he admits that the formation of self-defense groups accelerated more than expected.

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