The Michoacan area of Mexico has become so illegal that a gang of female vigilantes take on the responsibility of protecting their friends and family.
The state, which is the world’s largest supplier of avocados and lime, has recently been overtaken by the violent Jalisco drug cartel that comes from the neighboring state and is thus fighting women, according to The Associated Press.
Women wear assault rifles and post roadblocks, often while pregnant or carrying small children with them, to combat the rising homicide levels that have risen since 2013.
Most of the women lost family members to the cartel, such as Blanco Nava who told the AP 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.
Another woman claimed that her 14-year-old daughter had been abducted and had not been seen since, saying, “We will defend with our lives those who remain, the children we have left behind. We women are tired of seeing our children, our families are disappearing. They take our sons, they take our daughters, our relatives, our wives. ”
Women are in the fight, because most men are imprisoned for cartels (willingly or unwillingly).
“As soon as I see a man who can carry a weapon, I take him,” the woman told AP. “She is OK. We don’t know if they have them (as recruits) or if they have already killed them “.
The vigilante women also made a house tank, “a heavy truck with steel armor welded on it,” the AP reports, while women in other cities dug trenches over roads leading to neighboring Jalisco, for you would keep the attackers.
Alberto García refused to join the cartels and had to flee. His family members were not so lucky.
“They also killed one of my brothers,” Garcia said. “My sister-in-law, who was eight months pregnant, also broke it to pieces.”
Vigilantes say they must resort to these tactics because the government and police are failing to do so.
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.