Showing posts with label citizen patrols. Show all posts
Showing posts with label citizen patrols. Show all posts

Jun 24, 2013

Official Corruption in Mexico, Once Rarely Exposed, Is Starting to Come to Light

By Karla Zabludovsky 
Published: June 23, 2013

Andrés Granier has a sumptuous wardrobe and lifestyle. He has bragged about owning 400 pairs of shoes, 300 suits and 1,000 shirts, collected from luxury stores in New York and Los Angeles. His purchases barely fit in his several properties, scattered throughout Mexico and abroad.

The case of Mr. Granier, who was taken into custody on June 14 at a Mexico City hospital where he is being treated for a heart ailment, is just the latest among several former governors and public officials who have recently found themselves under investigation or facing public scorn.  Read more. 

Jan 22, 2013

In Mexico, self-defense squads are springing up against drug-fueled violence

The Washington Post: January 21, 2013

AYUTLA, Mexico — The young man at the roadside checkpoint wept softly behind the red bandanna that masked his face. At his side was a relic revolver, and his feet were shod in the muddy, broken boots of a farmer.

Haltingly, he told how his cousin’s body was found in a mass grave with about 40 other victims of a drug gang. Apparently, the cousin had caught a ride with an off-duty soldier and when gunmen stopped the vehicle, they killed everyone on the car.


“There isn’t one of us who hasn’t felt the pain ... of seeing them take a family member and not being able to ever get them back,” said the young civilian self-defense patrol member, who identified himself as “just another representative of the people of the mountain.”

Now he has joined hundreds of other men in the southern Mexico state of Guerrero who have taken up arms to defend their villages against drug gangs, a vigilante movement born of frustration at extortion, killings and kidnappings that local police are unable, or unwilling, to stop.

Vigilantes patrol a dozen or more towns in rural Mexico, the unauthorized but often tolerated edge of a growing movement toward armed citizen self-defense squads across the country.  Read more.