Armed militia group clash with Goverment troops

Mexican soldiers clashed with members of an armed citizen’s militia group. Multiple casualties were reported. Mexico’s government recently amped up its presence in the surrounding state of Michoacan after ongoing conflicts between armed civilians and drug cartel members have escalated. A recent push by the vigilante group to drive members of the Caballeros Templarios drug cartel out of the city of Apatzingan has led to an even more complicated situation. While heavily armed soldiers congregated in the center of Apatzingan, other units operating outside of the city tried to disarm some of the vigilantes. During the operation, some soldiers reportedly fired at members of the civilian group.
Gloria Perez Torres, whose brother, Mario was killed in the clash with Mexican soldiers told reporters, “This is how they plan to protect the community? We don’t want them.”

Mexican security analyst Eduardo Guerrero told me, “Apatzingan is where the Caballeros Templarios are entrenched. If the government let the [vigilantes] enter there probably would have been a very violent reaction. The Caballeros would have probably massacred a lot of them.”
The L.A. Times reported “The armed peasant groups emerged last year to fight off the cartel, which had metastasized throughout the southwestern state, coordinating the lucrative methamphetamine trade and extortion rackets and wielding significant control over the major container port of Lazaro Cardenas. Until recently, the self-defense groups had been largely tolerated, if not encouraged, by President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration, which had allowed them to staff some roadblocks alongside federal police and soldiers.”
Unlike Canada’s Batman or the super-hero style vigilantes that have emerged in some cities in the U.S., Mexico’s self defense forces enjoy a degree of legal recognition for the role they play in their communities. As is well-publicized by the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups in the U.S., the U.S. constitution provides citizens with the right “a well regulated militia” and also states that “being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
Mexico’s constitution is even more explicit.
Mexico’s constitution directly explains, “the nation is multicultural” and is “originally based on indigenous peoples.” The constitution states that groups that preserve at least part of their pre-colonial traditions can “recognize their own authorities in accordance with their own usos y custumbres.” Subject to the other tenets of the constitution and the protection of individual rights, indigenous communities are granted the authority to “apply their own normative systems in the regulation and resolution of internal conflicts.”
In the 1970s, changes to Article 10 of Mexico’s constitution, which once guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms, as well as the passage of new federal firearms control laws, made it virtually impossible for private citizens to purchase and carry guns. While the constitution protects the right for citizens to store non-military guns within their homes, a total absence of private gun stores and a ban on private gun stores have more or less erased the legal consumer market for firearms. Article 9 of Mexico’s federal firearm law bans private ownership of pistols with a caliber over nine millimeters. Like the constitution itself, the firearms regulations grant special privileges to rural residents and traditional lifestyles. The law states that “ejidatarios, community members and farmworkers in the countryside, outside of urban zones” can own pistols, .22 caliber rifles, and all shotguns other than those with military-style short-length barrels.
While Mexico’s Federal Firearms Laws place serious restrictions on the right to carry arms, there is an exception for “police institutions” that “comply with federal and local legal frameworks.” In all cases, the permission to carry a weapon can be revoked if the carrier “makes bad use of the weapons.”
So, while Mexico’s constitution does provide indigenous communities with the right to self-regulate their own police and judiciary systems, the armed groups in Michoacan appear to have taken on a different sort of profile. Unlike the poorly armed citizen police I met with in August in the town of Xaltianguis near the Pacific resort city Acapulco, (see here for article and photos) the so-called “self defense” forces in Michoacan ride around in pickup trucks wearing bullet-proof vests and carrying modern, military grade weapons.
What this means is that the security dynamic in Michoacan is only getting more complicated.  Guerrero told me, “I think the auto-defensas are out of the government’s control and will keep trying to advance. [The government] is going to supervise the auto-defensas and try to limit their territorial expansion, but they can’t disarm the auto-defensas because then the Caballeros Templarios would come back to the towns they’ve been pushed out of and kill the unarmed militia members.”
The Associated Press reported “After initially arresting the vigilantes months ago, the federal government appeared to be working with them recently. The army and Federal Police have provided helicopter cover and road patrols while the self-defense groups attacked the cartel, but never intervened in the battles.”
Now, the government appears to have shifted its stance again.
“The federal government has been erratic,” Guerrero told me.
So far Mexico’s government has focused on the need for enforcing laws that ban citizens from owning military style weapons. Although Mexico’s tough gun laws prevent companies  such as Smith & Wesson (which earns 9 percent of its revenue in Latin America) and Sturm Ruger from directly selling weapons in Mexico, for years such military grade weapons have been sold under the loose rules permitted in U.S. border states and smuggled south of the border to Mexico.
Mexico’s Interior Minister and top security policy architect Osorio Chong has called on Michoacan’s vigilante groups go back to their homes. He also warned there would be “no tolerance” for anyone found in possession of illegal military-grade weapons. He also suggested that militia members should consider joining official police forces — or report crimes a toll-free tip line.
In a radio interview self-defense group leader Hipolito Mora vowed to “continue in our struggle,” and said the groups have no plans to hand over their weapons. “It’s easy to say [we should disarm], because they’ve never lived through the hell that we’ve lived through,” Mora said.
At an event on January 13 in Morelia, Michoacán’s capital city, Chong said that the federal government would take control of the Tierra Caliente region of the sate.

“Rest assured that we will contain the violence in Michoacán,” he said.
Esteban Barragán, a professor at the Center for Rural Studies at the College of Michoacán explained, “The complexity of the problem lies in the fact that no one knows who is involved in the conflict anymore.”
“Who is a genuine vigilante, and who is a member of the Knights Templar cartel or who is just taking advantage of the chaotic situation for a personal vendetta?” he asked.
“Tierra Caliente has become a no man’s land full of personal vendettas, serial kidnappings, forced disappearances, and murders that come and go unnoticed, every day,” Mr. Barragán said.
As they move out of their home communities and go on the offensive, the armed citizen groups are also stepping outside of the bounds of the statutes of Mexico’s constitution that have been used to provide self defense forces with a veneer of legitimacy over the past year.
So far, however, they are still being left with room to operate.
Vigilante group spokesman Estanislao Beltran said “We don’t have confidence in the government,” he said. “We’ve asked for help for years and have received the same.”
So far President Peña Nieto has made his economic agenda his top public priority and has distanced himself from Mexico’s security problems. As the conflict continues to evolve in Michoacan a clear security strategy for the state will be essential.