San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Women-only vigilante group says it wants to ward off cartel’s moves into Mexican state
EL TERRERO, Mexico — In the birthplace of this nation’s vigilante “self-defense” movement, a new group has emerged entirely made up of women, who carry assault rifles and post roadblocks to fend off what they say is a bloody incursion into the state of Michoacán by the violent Jalisco cartel.
Some of the four dozen women warriors are pregnant; some carry their small children to the barricades with them. The rural area is traversed by dirt roads, through which they fear Jalisco gunmen could penetrate at a time when the homicide rate in Michoacán has spiked to levels not seen since 2013.
Many of the women vigilantes in the hamlet of El Terrero have lost sons, brothers or fathers in the fighting. Eufresina Blanco Nava said her son Freddy Barrios, a 29-year old lime picker, was kidnapped by presumed Jalisco cartel gunmen in pickups; she has never heard from him since.
“They have disappeared a lot of people, a lot, and young girls, too,” Blanco Nava said.
One woman, who asked that her name not be used because she has relatives in areas dominated by the Jalisco cartel, said that cartel kidnapped her 14-yearold daughter, who hasn’t been found. “We are going to defend those we have left, the children we have left, with our lives,” the woman said.
“We women are tired of seeing our children, our families disappear,” the vigilante said. “They take our sons, they take our daughters, our relatives, our husbands.”
That is, in part, why the women are taking up arms; men are growing scarce in Michoacán’s lime-growing areas.
“As soon as they see a man who can carry a gun, they take him away,” the woman said. “They disappear. We don’t know if they have them (as recruits) or if they already killed them.”
Beside the barricades and roadblocks, the female vigilantes have a homemade tank, a heavyduty pickup with steel plate armor welded on it. In other towns nearby, residents have dug trenches across roads leading into neighboring Jalisco state, to keep the attackers out.
El Terrero has long been dominated by the New Michoacán Family and Viagras gangs, while the Jalisco cartel controls the south bank of the Rio Grande. In 2019, the Viagras hijacked and burned a half-dozen trucks and buses to block the bridge over the river to prevent Jalisco convoys from entering in a surprise assault. It is that divide where everyone must choose sides that has many convinced that El Terrero vigilantes are foot soldiers for New Michoacán or Viagras.
The vigilantes deny allegations that they’re part of a criminal gang, though they clearly see the Jalisco cartel as their foe. They say they would be more than happy for police and soldiers to come in and do their jobs.
El Terrero is not far from the town of La Ruana, where the selfdefense movement was launched in 2013 by lime grower Hipolito Mora. After successfully chasing out the Knights Templar cartel, Mora, like most of the original leaders, has distanced himself from the so-called self-defense groups that remain. He now is a candidate for governor.
“I can almost assure you that they are not legitimate self-defense activists,” Mora said. “They are organized crime. … The few self-defense groups that exist have allowed themselves to be infiltrated; they are criminals disguised as self-defense.”
Michoacán’s current governor, Silvano Aureoles, is more emphatic. “They are criminals, period. Now, to cloak themselves and protect their illegal activities, they call themselves self-defense groups, as if that were some passport for impunity.”
Sergio Garcia, a male member of El Terrero vigilante group, says his 15-year-old brother was kidnapped and killed by Jalisco. Now, he wants justice that police have never given him.
“We are here for a reason, to get justice by hook or by crook, because if we don’t do it, nobody else will,” Garcia said.