Mexican vigilantes split over call to disarm
URUAPAN (Mexico) (AFP) - Vigilantes who have fought a year-long battle against a powerful drug cartel in western Mexico appeared divided Tuesday over government demands to disarm and let federal forces take over security.
Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong urged the civilian militias to lay down their arms in the troubled state of Michoacan after the vigilantes seized another town in their fight against the Knights Templar gang in recent days.
The civilian militias say they have now surrounded Apatzingan, the region's economic hub and a city considered the cartel's headquarters, raising fears of a bloody urban confrontation.
The unrest in the agricultural state has become the biggest security challenge of President Enrique Pena Nieto's 13-month-old administration, undermining his pledge to reduce drug violence in Mexico.
After leading a security meeting in the state capital, Morelia, with the state government, Osorio Chong said Monday that federal forces would take over security in the region known as Tierra Caliente, or Hot Country.
Estanislao Beltran, a leader of a militia that seized the town of Nueva Italia on Sunday, told AFP that soldiers had arrived late Monday to disarm his men and that two vigilantes were killed amid a tense standoff.
But army and interior ministry spokespeople said they were unaware that any shootout had broken out.
"We are very sad. They army killed two of us," Beltran said, adding that his group would not disarm.
Hipolito Mora, founder of the first vigilante force that emerged in the town of La Ruana in February 2013, also told AFP his armed movement "will continue."
Mora and Beltran said they were unaware that the region's most high-profile vigilante leader, Jose Manuel Mireles, appeared in a video broadcast on television saying the council of self-defense groups decided to "heed the call from the interior minister."
"We accept to return to our communities of origin and return to our day-to-day activities," said Mireles, who had been under police protection in a Mexico City hospital after sustaining head injuries in a plane crash.
The mixed messages from the region's civilian militia leaders added to the complex situation in Michoacan.
The vigilantes formed almost a year ago, arguing that local police were unwilling or unable to curb the cartel's violence and extortion rackets.
Pena Nieto deployed thousands of troops and federal police to the state in May, but their presence failed to discourage more towns to take up arms.
Ignoring repeated government warnings that their expansion would not be tolerated, the civilian militias continued to grow and seized around 20 towns.
The Templars have accused the vigilantes of working for the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel, a charge the civilian militias deny.
But analysts say the government had tacitly allowed the vigilantes to do the security work for them until now, a risky tactic that could have replicated Colombia's experience with violent paramilitary militias.
Osorio Chong invited the vigilantes to join the regular police forces and warned authorities would "not tolerate" people using illegal weapons.
But he did not say how many federal forces would be used for the new security effort.
The attorney general's office said in a statement that it was sending 11 helicopters as well as 70 agents and investigators to the state.
For his part, the state's much-criticized governor, Fausto Vallejo, announced that he would now regularly work from Apatzingan and other towns of Tierra Caliente.
Apatzingan was a ghost town on Monday, with stores closed in the city of 123,000 people that is a vital trade hub for the region's lime, avocado and mango exports.
