EL TERRERO, Mexico (AP) – In the birthplace of Mexico’s vigilante “self-defense” movement, a new group of women has sprung up, carrying assault rifles and posting blockades to avoid what they say is a bloody incursion into the state of Michoacán by the violent Jalisco cartel.
Some of the four dozen warrior women are pregnant; some take their young children to barricades with them. The countryside is littered with dirt roads, fearing that armed gunmen could enter Jalisco at a time when the Michoacán homicide rate has risen to unprecedented levels since 2013.
Many of the vigilant women in the village of El Terrero lost sons, brothers or fathers in battle. Eufresina Blanco Nava said her son Freddy Barrios, a 29-year-old lime picker, was abducted by alleged Jalisco cartel gunmen in trucks; she hasn’t heard from him since.
“A lot of people have disappeared, a lot, and young girls as well,” Blanco Nava said.
A woman, who asked for her name not to be used because she has relatives in areas dominated by the Jalisco cartel, said the cartel abducted her 14-year-old daughter and disappeared, adding: “We will protect those who remain, children which we left with our lives. ”
“We, the women, are tired of seeing our children, our families are disappearing,” said the vigilante. “They take our sons, they take our daughters, our relatives, our wives.”
That is why, in part, women take up arms; men are fewer and fewer in the hot lime areas of Michoacan.
“As soon as I see a man who can carry a weapon, I take him,” the woman said. “She is OK. We don’t know if they have them (as recruits) or if they have already killed them “.
In addition to barricades and roadblocks, vigilant women have a house tank, a large-capacity truck with welded steel armor on it. In other nearby cities, residents dug trenches over roads leading to neighboring Jalisco to keep attackers at bay.
Alberto García, a vigilant man, saw the medieval side of the war: he is from Naranjo de Chila, a town just across the river from El Terrero and the birthplace of the leader of the Jalisco cartel, Nemesio Oseguera. Garcia said he was fled the city by gunmen from the Jalisco cartel because he refused to join the group.
“They also killed one of my brothers,” Garcia said. “My sister-in-law, who was eight months pregnant, also broke it to pieces.”
El Terrero has long been dominated by the new Michoacán families and the Viagras gangs, while the Jalisco cartel controls the southern bank of the Rio Grande River. In 2019, Viagras hijacked and burned half a dozen trucks and buses to block the bridge over the river, to prevent Jalisco convoys from entering a surprise attack.
And in the same year, in the following city, San Jose de Chila, rival gangs used a church as an armed stronghold to fight a Jalisco army offensive. Buried in the church tower and along its roof, they tried to defend the city against the incursion, leaving the church full of bullet holes.
It is that strong division in which everyone is forced to choose parties – either Jalisco or the New Michoacán and Viagras Family – that has many convinced that El Terrero vigilantes are just soldiers of punishment for one of the last two gangs.
The vigilantes bitterly deny allegations that they are part of a criminal gang, although they clearly see the Jalisco cartel as their enemy. They say they would be more than happy for the police and soldiers to come in and do their job.
El Terrero is not far from the city of La Ruana, where the real self-defense movement was launched in 2013 by lime producer Hipolito Mora. After successfully fleeing the Templar cartel, Mora, like most of the original leaders, distanced herself from the so-called remaining self-defense groups and is now a candidate for government.
“I can almost assure you that they are not legitimate self-defense activists,” Mora said. “It simply came to our notice then. … The few self-defense groups that exist have allowed themselves to infiltrate; they are criminals disguised as self-defense ”.
Michoacán’s current governor, Silvano Aureoles, is more emphatic. “They are criminals, period. Now, to cover up and protect their illegal activities, they call themselves self-defense groups, as if they were a passport to impunity.
But in some respects, says Mora, the same conditions remain that gave rise to the initial movement in 2013: the authorities and the police fail to enforce the law and do not guarantee the peace of the residents.
Sergio Garcia, a member of the El Terrero vigilante group, says his 15-year-old brother was abducted and killed by Jalisco. Now, he wants a justice that the police never gave him.
“We are here for a reason, to get justice through the hook or the crook, because if we don’t, no one else will,” Garcia said.
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Associated Press writer Mark Stevenson contributed from Mexico City.