How long before this is on our doorsteps?

[Billybob]

Google-fu:
"A yellow ribbon attached to weapons provides a way to identify members of the self defense force in Tancitaro. Vigilantes took up arms in Tancítaro against a group known as 'Los Caballeros Templarios'."

Most articles I've seen link them to members of the "Self-Defense Council of Michoacán" and we're seeing them in different places not just Tancítaro.

But Tancítaro has been involved in this from early on(they started fighting the Zetas 10yrs. ago) so maybe they've been at it longer and are considered experienced vets so some of them have dispersed into the other newer less experienced forces and that's why we see them mixed in here and there?

 

[Billybob]

A member of a so-called self-defense group on the streets of Antúnez, where a drug gang had held sway. Rodrigo Cruz-Perez for The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/world/americas/a-quandary-for-mexico-as-vigilantes-rise.html?_r=0

 

[Billybob]

A Mexican militia, battling Michoacan drug cartel, has American roots


The two dozen men standing guard on a rutted road that cuts through these lime groves and cornfields are just one small part of a citizen militia movement spreading over the lowlands of western Mexico. But as they told their stories, common threads emerged: Los Angeles gang members. Deported Texas construction workers. Dismissed Washington state apple pickers.

Many were U.S. immigrants who came back, some voluntarily but most often not, to the desiccated job market in the state of Michoacan and found life under the Knights Templar drug cartel that controls the area almost unlivable. They took up arms because they were financially abused by the extortion rackets run by the Templars. Because they had family killed or wounded by their enemies. Because carrying a silver-plated handgun and collecting defeated narcos’ designer cellphones as war booty is more invigorating than packing cucumbers. Because they get to feel, for once, the sensation of being in charge.

“Everybody’s with us, all the people,” said Edgar Orozco, a 27-year-old American citizen who left his job at a Sacramento body shop nine months ago to join the fight after the Knights Templar killed his uncle and cousin. “We’re not going to disarm. Never.”

Up and down the ranks of this group challenging the authority of the Mexican state are men who have brought their formative experiences in the United States to play in this chaotic uprising.

The movement’s top leader, surgeon Jose Manuel Mireles, lived for several years in Sacramento and worked for the Red Cross. Since he was injured in a plane crash earlier this month, much of the movement’s military leadership has fallen to a 34-year-old El Paso car salesman named Luis Antonio Torres Gonzalez, known as “El Americano” because he was born in the States. He joined the militia after he was kidnapped on a routine family vacation to Michoacan in October 2012. His relatives sold land and took up collections to pay his $150,000 ransom.

After that, he began plotting with Mireles and others to take revenge on the Knights Templar, an uprising that began last February when residents from three towns - Tepalcatepec, Buena Vista, and La Ruana - marshaled whatever rifles and shotguns they could find and seized control. Since then, the militia has spread to more than 20 towns, nearly encircling the region’s largest city, Apatzingan, a stronghold of the drug gang.

The Knights Templar retaliated by attacking electricity substations and burning pharmacies and convenience stores. The militia has achieved what thousands of Mexican soldiers and federal police stationed in Michoacan have failed to do: impede the operations of this powerful cartel on a large scale...(continued)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...f96894-7f92-11e3-97d3-b9925ce2c57b_story.html

 

[0311]

Wow! A popular armed uprising against the Cartel, that is working! No wonder the Mexican government wants them disarmed!

 

[0311]

I wonder if Obama is on the side of the Mexican government and Cartel, or the armed Citizens that are taking their towns back?

 

[Billybob]

I wonder if Obama is on the side of the Mexican government and Cartel, or the armed Citizens that are taking their towns back?

Hard to tell, allegations are some in our Gov. have been dealing with one of the cartels(see post #11) and recently we signed some oil agreement with the Mexican Gov.

 

[Billybob]

When you want the truth in Mexico, talk to a priest.


So says our Mexico City correspondent, who is currently traveling through the western state of Michoacán to report on a violent standoff between the federal government and armed vigilantes. The conflict has upended the local rule of law, shut down major transportation routes, and disrupted businesses from avocado farms to Pepsi truckers to Oxxo supermarkets.

But the truth is hard to find in Mexico because of the confusing nature of this deadly clash. In theory, the government should be united with the vigilantes against a common enemy: the violent drug cartel known as Knights of Templar that has ruled Michoacán through intimidation and fear. Instead, they’re all at gunpoint after the federal government announced this week it would force the vigilantes to lay down their arms, while the so-called “alto defenses” have vowed to stand strong until the government weakens the drug cartel.

The implication is that the government is providing political protection to the Knights of Templar, while rival cartels are providing tactical support to the vigilantes with weapons. To dig into the matter, our correspondent says he sought input from local religious leaders who have their ears close to the ground.

“I have spoken to numerous priests, and all of them say that it’s exaggerated to suggest the defense groups are clean, but it’s also unfair to say they’re puppets of other cartels,” our correspondent says.

Meanwhile, the Catholic leaders also question the reasoning for the government’s forceful resolve to disarm the vigilantes, who have wrested control of entire towns from the cartel and restored businesses and farms to their rightful owners. Michoacán is a fertile agriculture region that produces millions of pounds of avocados annually for export to the US.

“Catholic bishops here say that this leaves the suspicion that these drug gangs are being protected by the government,” adds our correspondent. “The government appears duplicitous.”

Our correspondent spoke by telephone Wednesday night from the military-controlled town of Apatzingan, which was swarming with freshly arrived federal police and military. On the two-hour drive there from Mexico City, our correspondent’s vehicle needed to reroute around a vigilante roadblock: a seized Pepsi tractor trailer positioned sideways across the highway. Along the way our correspondent stopped in the rebel-controlled town of Nueva Italia just as townspeople were gathering in the public square to rally support for the vigilantes in the face of fast-approaching convoys of federal police and military.

The Nueva Italia townspeople agreed to form a committee that would equip and feed the vigilante defense forces against the government. Their defiance is understandable; after all, in less than one year, the vigilantes have accomplished what the federal government failed to achieve after more than seven years and 100,000 deaths: reclaim the land from drug cartels. Why should the vigilantes be forced to sacrifice those gains?

But hidden in the fog are alliances and pacts between numerous gangs and rebels and government entities. All that’s clear is that the vigilantes won’t lay down their arms without a protracted struggle, says our correspondent.

“Michoacán is very symbolic of the Mexican crackdown on organized crime,” he says. “It was the first place the federal government sent troops in December 2006 because this is where La Familia, the predecessor of Knights of Templar, started.

“You have to take a long view of this,” he adds. “It’s been seven years since then. Things haven’t changed. So there is some skepticism why it would change now.”

http://monitorfrontiermarkets.com/vigilantes-mexican-police-in-standoff-in-michoacan/

 

[Hoov]

It does sound like they are using pages out of the Obama play book. Hell, we may have even given them the whistle. If we actually hear something from our Curmudgeonor in Chief, he will back their prez. I plan to buy more gun stocks. The vigilantes seem to be the real tea party. We have the meh party.

 

[Billybob]

Mexico's Congress urges US to faciliate asylum for victims of violence

Mexican citizens seeking asylum in the U.S because of violence back home are getting support from an unusual place: Mexico’s Congress.

Mexican lawmakers passed a resolution calling on the U.S. government to facilitate asylum cases.

“This is a game changer,” said Carlos Spector, an attorney at his El Paso office in a room packed with people he has represented in asylum cases.

“This is the first time in the history of a country that we know of that a Congress has come out and said facilitate the asylum claims of our citizens because we are incapable of defending them,” said Spector.

Senator Maria de Guadalupe Calderon Hinojosa introduced the resolution. She is the sister of former president Felipe Calderon...

http://www.khou.com/news/texas-news...asylum-for-victims-of-violence-240385821.html


Mexico violence may lead to binational hearings

U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-Texas, is exploring the possibility participating in a binational hearing on Mexico's violence and the status of asylum-seekers from that country, officials said Tuesday.

"Mexicanos en Exilio in coordination with Congressman Beto O'Rourke and Senator Maria Luisa Calderón are in the developmental stages of a bi-national congressional hearing on the border to highlight violence in Mexico and application of U.S. asylum law as applied to Mexicans," El Paso lawyer Carlos Spector said...

http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_24913544/asylum-seekers-fleeing-mexico-violence-want-u-s

 

[Billybob]

Cochise County on alert, violence reported in Agua Prieta

On Saturday January 18, 2014, at approximately 12:45 a.m., the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office was contacted by the Douglas Port of Entry regarding what sounded like a gun battle with automatic weapons and possibly hand grenades south of the United States/Mexico border. The Port of Entry advised that the sounds lasted until just after 1:00 a.m., and there were no requests for medical personnel or ambulances to respond to the port.

Information, which was received throughout the day, indicates that a gun/weapons fight did occur in Agua Prieta, Sonora, south of the US/Mexico border, where several fatalities occurred in two separate incidents. All information received indicates that this is probably cartel related with massive amounts of munitions used to include automatic weapons, 50 caliber weapons, and hand grenades. Reports of the death toll range from 8-13 people...

http://www.arizonadailyindependent....ty-on-alert-violence-reported-in-agua-prieta/