The Michoacan area of Mexico has become so lawless that a gang of female vigilantes take it upon themselves to protect their friends and family.
The state, which is the world’s largest supplier of avocados and limes, has recently been overrun by the violent Jalisco drug cartel hailing from the neighboring state and so the women are fighting back, according to The Associated Press.
The women carry assault rifles and set up roadblocks, often while pregnant or carrying small children, to combat the growing murder rate, which has skyrocketed since 2013.
The majority of women have lost family members to the cartel, such as Blanco Nava who told the AP that her son Freddy Barrios, a 29-year-old lime picker, was kidnapped by alleged Jalisco cartel members in pickup trucks; she has never heard from him since.
Another woman claimed her 14-year-old daughter had been kidnapped and has not been seen since. She said, “We’re going to defend those we’ve left behind, the children we’ve left behind with our lives. We women are tired of seeing our children, our families disappear. They take our sons, they take our daughters, our relatives, our husbands. “
It is left to the women to fight, as most men are taken away to work for the cartels (voluntarily or otherwise).
“As soon as they see a man who can carry a gun, they take him,” the woman told the AP. “They’re disappearing. We don’t know if they have them (as recruits) or if they’ve already killed them.”
The women vigilantes also made a homemade tank, “a heavy pickup truck with steel armor welded on it,” the AP reports, while women in other cities have dug trenches on roads leading to neighboring Jalisco state to keep the attackers out. . .
Alberto García refused to join the cartels and had to flee. His relatives were not so lucky.
“They also killed one of my brothers,” said Garcia. “They cut him to pieces, and my sister-in-law, who was eight months pregnant.”
The vigilantes say they should resort to these tactics, as the government and the police don’t.
Sergio Garcia, a male member of the El Terrero vigilante group, says his 15-year-old brother was kidnapped and murdered by Jalisco. Now he wants justice that the police never gave him.
“We’re here for a reason, to get justice with a hook or a crook, because if we don’t do it, no one else will,” Garcia said.