(Joshua Partlow/ The Washington Post ) - Adolfo Silva
Mendoza, right, and other militiamen stop a man they suspected of
working for the Knights Templar drug cartel, Jan. 15, 2014.
A Mexican militia, battling Michoacan drug cartel, has American roots
(Joshua Partlow/ The Washington Post ) - Adolfo Silva
Mendoza, right, and other militiamen stop a man they suspected of
working for the Knights Templar drug cartel, Jan. 15, 2014.
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Santos Ramos Vargas, at 43 the oldest of this gang, got deported from Menlo Park, Calif., when he was caught carrying a pistol.
Adolfo Silva Ramos might be with his 2-year-old daughter in
Orange County rather than wearing a camouflage cap and combat boots if
he hadn’t been busted selling marijuana and crystal meth while in high
school there.
The two dozen men standing guard on a rutted road
that cuts through these lime groves and cornfields are just one small
part of a citizen militia movement spreading over the lowlands of
western Mexico. But as they told their stories, common threads emerged:
Los Angeles gang members. Deported Texas construction workers. Dismissed
Washington state apple pickers.
Many were U.S. immigrants who
came back, some voluntarily but most often not, to the desiccated job
market in the state of Michoacan and found life under the Knights
Templar drug cartel that controls the area almost unlivable. They took
up arms because they were financially abused by the extortion rackets
run by the Templars. Because they had family killed or wounded by their
enemies. Because carrying a silver-plated handgun and collecting
defeated narcos’ designer cellphones as war booty is more invigorating
than packing cucumbers. Because they get to feel, for once, the
sensation of being in charge.
“Everybody’s with us, all the
people,” said Edgar Orozco, a 27-year-old American citizen who left his
job at a Sacramento body shop nine months ago to join the fight after
the Knights Templar killed his uncle and cousin. “We’re not going to
disarm. Never.”
Up and down the ranks of this group challenging
the authority of the Mexican state are men who have brought their
formative experiences in the United States to play in this chaotic
uprising.
The movement’s top leader, surgeon Jose Manuel Mireles,
lived for several years in Sacramento and worked for the Red Cross.
Since he was injured in a plane crash earlier this month, much of the
movement’s military leadership has fallen to a 34-year-old El Paso car
salesman named Luis Antonio Torres Gonzalez, known as “El Americano”
because he was born in the States. He joined the militia after he was
kidnapped on a routine family vacation to Michoacan in October 2012. His
relatives sold land and took up collections to pay his $150,000 ransom.
After that, he began plotting with Mireles and others to take
revenge on the Knights Templar, an uprising that began last February
when residents from three towns — Tepalcatepec, Buena Vista, and La
Ruana — marshaled whatever rifles and shotguns they could find and
seized control. Since then, the militia has spread to more than 20
towns, nearly encircling the region’s largest city, Apatzingan, a stronghold of the drug gang.
The
Knights Templar retaliated by attacking electricity substations and
burning pharmacies and convenience stores. The militia has achieved what
thousands of Mexican soldiers and federal police stationed in Michoacan
have failed to do: impede the operations of this powerful cartel on a
large scale.
The militia has rapidly won followers,
heavier weapons, armored cars. Some of the guns and trucks appear to be
scavenged off the battlefield. The militia’s critics say some may be
funneled in from a rival drug cartel, New Generation, which operates
from the neighboring state of Jalisco.
Government officials are
concerned that the militia will turn into the same type of abusive gun
gang that prompted its formation. The Knights Templar’s predecessor
cartel began with similar rhetoric about defending the people, but from
the violent Zetas cartel. The government’s newly appointed envoy in
charge of Michoacan’s security, Alfredo Castillo, warned that the
militia could abuse its power.
“You can start with a genuine
cause, but when you start taking control, making decisions and feeling
authority . . . you run the risk of getting to that point,” he said on
the radio.
‘I’m familiar with guns’
By his own admission, Moises Verduzco had never been “a good
boy.” Raised a foster child in Hawthorne, Calif., he spent time in
juvenile hall and county jail and ran with a gang before being deported.
“I’m familiar with guns,” he said. “It feels good to be doing the right
thing for the first time.”
The movement has gained momentum in
part because the Knights Templar morphed from a gang that moved
methamphetamine into one that imposed harsh economic demands on so many
residents: Vendors required to pay the gang 20 cents per two pounds of
tortillas sold, 30 cents for beef. Fees demanded from everyone who owned
a car or a house or a plot of land. Twenty percent of nightclub
revenues. A farmer’s entire crop of corn or limes or cucumbers sold to
the Knights Templar at the price and quantity of their choosing.
For
migrants living in the States and sending their hard-earned paychecks
home to Mexico each month, this extortion became unacceptable.
“Everybody who lives over there sends money to his family here, and nobody wants to pay the Templarios no more,” Orozco said.
On the offensive
With their newfound authority, these untrained gunmen have taken
responsibility for decisions of law and order, while federal police and
soldiers mostly stand by and watch.
At their checkpoint in La
Estacion, the militiamen pulled over Jose Rodriguez, a 39-year-old owner
of a small auto shop. Rodriguez told the militiamen he was towing a
gray Jeep Liberty to Apatzingan because his shop lacked the necessary
parts. They suspected it was stolen.
“I
hope in the future things will be okay, but right now this is not
good,” Rodriguez said. “These guys can’t be judge and jury.”
The
Jeep’s owner eventually arrived with papers to clarify the confusion. As
they debated this, a bandanna-masked town official pointed to a black
Chevrolet Suburban coming down the road.
“Hey hey! Stop the
truck. That’s one of them,” he said. The militiamen blocked the road and
pulled the driver from behind its tinted windows.
“That truck is used by some fool named Carmel,” Silva said. “He used to work for the Templars.”
The
atmosphere of casual teenage banter, a joint passing hand to hand,
suddenly lurched into something darker. Leaving the man’s wife and young
daughter on the roadside to look for a taxi, Silva and the others
marched the driver to a thatch hut for packing cucumbers. They pushed
him down into the dirt. They pulled the front of his white tank top back
over his face. “Who’s your brother-in-law?” Silva shouted.
Silva kicked the man in the ribs.
“Who’s your brother-in-law?”
They
loaded the man into a truck and drove off. When they came back, the
militiamen said they had dropped him off with the federal police who
were stationed up the road. “We’re not really sure if he’s working for
the cartels or not,” said Rios, one of the militia leaders.
The man’s wife said the family was driving their sick daughter to the hospital.
“Pretty much I’ve been on my own my whole life,” he said. “Mom was never home. Never [knew] my dad. Always fighting with my brother. I’d just rather be on the streets.”
When he was arrested in California for drugs he
took “voluntary departure” to Mexico to avoid prosecution. He worked the
overnight shift in a box factory and carted crates of cauliflower in
Michoacan. He jumped at the chance to join the militia and has no plans
to stop.