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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Billybob" data-source="post: 2388221" data-attributes="member: 1294">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.”<a href="http://monitorfrontiermarkets.com/vigilantes-mexican-police-in-standoff-in-michoacan/" target="_blank">http://monitorfrontiermarkets.com/vigilantes-mexican-police-in-standoff-in-michoacan/</a></blockquote>

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