Inside Mexico’s New “Self-Defense Squads"
There's a blur between community police and cartel troops; a Nahua vigilante soldier tells his story
With a decline in foreign bureaus of mainstream media, there’s a lack of opportunities for upcoming writers. Here at CrashOut, I’m proud to work with young and hungry reporters who get out in the field and do real journalism, like Max van der Graaf who has been on the front line of the Michoacán-Jalisco Cartel war to bring this exclusive.
By Max van der Graaf
Santiago was on patrol with two dozen troops from his “community police force” when they came under fire from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. The young recruit from an indigenous Nahua village in the mountains had been in two firefights before, but this was worse. They were near the state border between Michoacán and Colima, a disputed territory, pinned down on a dirt road and shooting back for their lives.
“Towards the end, I was running and I heard peeewww and it hit me,” Santiago tells me. “I said ‘They got me’ and I started grabbing parts of my body. But I realized it was my hand and I started laughing.”
Three years later, Santiago, now 23, is a battle-hardened veteran for his squad. For a weekly salary of 2,000 pesos, or about $100, he picks up an AR-15 and defends the towns and villages in his homeland from the incursion of the Jalisco mob. The firefights are now every week as the Jalisco Cartel makes a well-resourced attack into the area and many of his companions have been killed.
Santiago’s force are part of a spattering of what are referred to in Mexico as “autodefensas” or “self-defense squads,” who raise guns to fight the cartels - because the government has failed to protect them. The autodefensas surged in Michoacán in 2013-14 to combat the predatory Knights Templar mob, and were headed by charismatic leaders such as doctor José Mireles and farmer Hipólito Mora, who became national figures. Yet while many squads disbanded and Mireles and Mora are both dead, other groups have kept fighting and new squads have formed.
Many here see the vigilantes as heroes who risk their lives to stop cartel killers preying on their communities, shaking down hard workers and raping women. Yet there is also a dark side to the autodefensas. The vigilantes can accuse residents of being cartel informants and make them disappear. Squads have been infiltrated by drug traffickers or work for them as mercenaries. The heads of the force that Santiago’s squad is affiliated with have themselves been accused of cocaine trafficking. They may be fighting the Jalisco Cartel only to help other narcos.
Yet in the bloody fog of the Mexican Cartel Wars, things are morally mixed up. Autodefensas can genuinely stop certain predatory criminals while working for other law breakers. Some squads defend indigenous lands from exploitative mining companies, but others work with slash-and-burn capitalists. Some crews, especially those in indigenous villages, are deeply rooted in their communities, but others impose themselves and demand “war tax.” When you drive around Michoacán’s country roads and run into guys with guns, it’s hard to know which type they are.
I met Santiago in the back of a pick-up filled with jerry cans of petrol. As we shared a ride up into the hills, he began to tell me his story. We’ve been in daily contact for months now. He was initially reluctant to reveal much about his work to me. “Our bosses don’t like us giving out much information,” he said. “If one day they found messages or something like that, hopefully they wouldn’t do anything because you know those guys are crazy.”
But we agreed to hide exposing details and slowly he revealed much about his life on the front line; it sheds light on both the bloody battle in his native state of Michoacán and the dynamics of the cartel wars that spiral across Mexico. This is his tale.
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