Mexican farmers who took up arms against drug-gang violence
and other crime in the mountains of southern Mexico have turned over to
authorities 11 of 53 people that the vigilantes have put in improvised
jails over the last month as suspected criminals.
Bruno Placido,
leader of the self-styled "self-defense" movement, described the 11 as
the detainees accused by local residents of the most serious crimes,
such as murder, kidnapping and extortion. He said they were turned over
to state and federal officials.
The
authorities will presumably weigh bringing charges against the
detainees, but given that the suspects were taken and held with no legal
authority, in some cases for weeks, any prosecution might
prove difficult.
The
government of the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, where the vigilante
movement sprang up after a series of kidnappings in early January, said
that Placido's group had agreed to turn over "the first 20" detainees,
implying that more would eventually follow.
But Placido said an assembly of residents in the township of Ayutla would determine the next step.
The
movement has spread to about a dozen towns, with farmers wearing ski
masks and bearing old hunting rifles and shotguns setting up roadside
checkpoints to ask passing motorists for identification. The IDs are
checked against handwritten lists of "bad guys" that the movement wanted
to detain.
At
an assembly of townspeople last week, the 53 detainees were paraded
before local residents and plans were announced to bring charges against
them and try them before a similar town assembly, with no clear
provisions for what kind of defense they would be allowed to mount.
That
drew sharp criticism from human rights officials and activists, who
said the farmers movement was taking the law into its own hands and
could ride roughshod over the rights of the accused.
The
situation grew more complicated when local media said the vigilantes
might be trying to detain activists from other political groups, and
tensions rose between the vigilantes and the more established "community
police" that operates in dozens of Guerrero towns. The community police
are better regulated and partially recognized under state law.
State
and federal authorities have so far tolerated the movement, despite the
fact that its members have turned back government human rights
officials seeking to check on the detainees condition.
On Friday, Interior Secretary Miguel Osorio Chong
told the Milenio TV network that the government will seek to
"regularize their situation so that they can continue to
assist authorities."
The
vigilantes have been demanding uniforms, salaries and official ID cards
to continue their work, while authorities have been trying to get them
to stop wearing masks and turn checkpoint duties over to police
or soldiers.
The
sight of a dozen or so masked, armed men stopping cars on rural roads
can be intimidating, and a pair of tourists from Mexico City visiting a
local beach were shot at and slightly wounded when they failed to stop
at one such checkpoint last week.
Despite
such problems, authorities have been loath to crack down on the
vigilantes, given the government's own inability to bring security to
Guerrero state, which is home to the troubled beach resort of Acapulco,
where six Spanish tourists were raped by a gang of armed men Monday.
Guerrero Gov. Angel Aguirre said authorities "are very close" to making arrests in that case.
The
vigilantes say drug gangs from Acapulco have been coming up into the
hills around Ayutla to kidnap people and demand "protection" payments.
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