According to media related to the armed forces, in just five days the Mexican Army has imposed calm in the Tierra Caliente [Hot Country] of Michoacan, where the Knights Templar set up an empire of terror that provoked a popular rebellion in three municipalities adjacent to the state of Jalisco.
But that information is not entirely true, because the situation there remains tense and residents of Buenavista Tomatlán, Tepalcatepec and Coalcomán have not surrendered their weapons to the military. They distrust the Army, saying they do not know the region and even less the Knights Templar, who have taken over almost the entire area rich in the production of timber, limes, avocados and minerals.
When talking to people in the three municipalities--livestock producers, farmers, traders, officials and parents--they launched a direct question:
"Why disarm citizen vigilante groups who just want to reassure people, and not the criminals who walk around loose in cities like Apatzingán?"The question resounded in every village of the Tierra Caliente where we made long tours and where the Army arrived to disarm the people, installing roadblocks and carrying out public security work, but so far without any tangible results being seen, i.e., not a single arrest of a Knights Templar, the group that has dominated and controlled the area for a long time.
Tired of extortion, kidnappings and death threats, the inhabitants of the Tierra Caliente question the actions of the governor of Michoacán, Jesus Reyna, and President Enrique Pena Nieto, who gave the order to disarm citizen vigilante groups, which in the last days and months have managed to expel members of organized crime from their villages, which neither the State nor Federal Police, let alone the Army or the Navy managed to do in six years.
MV Note: Michoacán is the home state of former President Calderón and was the first state to which he sent the Army in December 2006, when he declared his war against the drug cartels.
With all legitimacy, they ask why the authorities act against them, when all they are doing is defending themselves, instead of fighting criminals who every day require them to pay protection fees for their economic activities, including harvesting limes and avocados, extracting minerals and selling meat.
It seems, they say, that for the authorities and the Army, they are the bad guys and not the heavily armed criminal groups who stroll through the towns, showing off their dominance in the streets, plazas, hills and mountains.
"Who is bad and who is good?¨, they inquire when they see the soldiers come to take away the weapons the villagers themselves have seized from members of the Knights Templar and now use to protect themselves.
Many young people involved in the citizen vigilante groups can be seen in the checkpoints installed at the entrances of the three municipalities and some other points. There are also adults, especially parents, who made the decision to defend themselves against the inefficiency of municipal, state and federal authorities to ensure safety which, by law, they are required to give.
Some carry high-powered weapons that they refuse to surrender to the Army. They say if they disarm, the assassins will kill with impunity, because the military is not able to recognize who the members of organized crime are, or to identify where they are hiding. In addition, the people distrust the "honesty" of the authorities that have been infiltrated or are in collusion with organized crime.
They, the people, know who the lookouts are, the assassins and leaders of the organized crime cells, and although they have reported them, they have not seen, so far, operations undertaken to disarm and arrest them and bring them to justice.
In the Tierra Caliente there has not been, nor is there now, peace for a long time. With their presence, the Army has failed to lower the tension in that area. That is not enough; they must stop the leaders of the criminal gangs and the police and municipal authorities who are with them.
The question of the inhabitants of this region is more than fair and goes to the heart of any government and the State itself. Whom to disarm first: Citizens who protect themselves and their families, their homes and their legally established businesses, or criminal groups who have imposed their own reign of terror through weapons? Spanish original