Well-armed vigilantes in Mexico’s Michoacan state have helped authorities dismantle a powerful criminal organization, but now the government may have a more difficult task: keeping Michoacan safe from these same ‘Self-Defense’ groups.
Investigation Chapters
Mexico’s Security Dilemma: The Battle for Michoacan
Faced with the government’s failure to rein in the criminals, communities across crime-besieged Mexico have been trying for years to organize effective civic resistance. Michoacan’s vigilantes express the most extreme response by society to date, but other efforts have been less belligerent. In battle-torn cities along the US border, a number of civic, business and…
Mexico’s Security Dilemma: The Rise of Michoacan’s Militias
Volunteer community policing has been a tradition in indigenous communities across Southern Mexico for centuries. Though controversial, advocates argue the practice is supported by international law and has been codified in the 1917 constitution that permits local frameworks for “the regulation and solution of internal conflicts.”1 These volunteer police forces vary in size and…
Mexico’s Security Dilemma: A Myopic Approach to Michoacan’s Militias
The desperation in Michoacan, as in many parts of Mexico, with regards to organized crime has led to a myopic view of this issue. In the short term, it produced, through the militias at least, a temporary solution to the immediate problem: the Knights Templar. In the medium to long term, however, it may have…
