Mexican vigilantes take over town long plagued by drug cartel

Fed up with the violence and kidnappings associated with the  infamous drug cartels and the inaction of the local police and military, a group  of citizens have decided to take the law into their own hands.  This weekend,  they claim another “victory” as they seize control of a small town called  Tancitaro from the grips of a powerful drug cartel dominating the state who call  themselves the Knights Templar.

About 400 members of this vigilante  group from two neighboring towns organized and swiftly moved into the Tancitaro  town hall, forcefully removing the municipal police from their posts and taking  over the town’s security role. 

According to the AFP, the “self-defense group” had a clash with another armed  group believed to be part of an organized crime unit on their way to Tancitaro  in a nearby town called Pareo.  Two were killed in the fire fight, but investigators have yet to determine which group they  belonged to.  Additionally, three members of the vigilante group were wounded in  the exchange.

These vigilante groups are estimated to  now consist of 5,000 armed citizens with various weapons ranging from .22s to  AK-47s, most of which were taken from defeated cartel members. 

“The government lost control. Organized  crime is in control of the state except in the towns that have risen up in  arms,” says avocado farmer and vigilante leader Jose Alvarado Robledo, who also asserts that the vigilante  groups will not give up control of their seized territories until the  authorities “hand over the heads of the four leaders of the Knights Templar.”

In a place notorious for government and  police corruption, perhaps the only way to defeat an illegal, armed group is  with an illegal, armed group of your own–or so say the people taking part in  this movement.  They have given all new meaning to the old phrase “fight fire  with fire”.