Mexico's Rule of Lawlessness

According to the US Departments of State and Homeland Security, referring to the organized crime gangs in Mexico as drug-trafficking organizations, or DTOs, is passé. The acronym du jour is TCOs, or transnational criminal organizations; to better reflect the cartels' sheer range of activity from people-smuggling and pipeline-raiding to illegal logging. The latter is no joke. In the rural municipality of Cheran, Michoacan, in western Mexico, local residents have formed a militia and surrounded their town with barricades after outlaw loggers came accompanied by heavily-armed gunmen; hired muscle purportedly working for one of Michoacan's feuding drug gangs – likely the Zetas or The Knights Templar (formerly La Familia). Clandestine logging has been a fact of life in this part of Michoacan for a decade, during which an estimated 80 per cent of Cheran's woodland has been illegally appropriated. But after loggers began packing automatic weapons – and cops, military, and local and state authorities turned their backs – residents of Cheran took matters into their own hands. They expelled local officials and established a communal city council, which voted to organize a citizens' militia to patrol and defend the town. In their first confrontation with the armed gang, residents of Cheran – armed with only sticks, machetes, and farming tools – seized ten trucks belonging to a logging crew and detained five of the drivers. One local resident was killed in the altercation; eleven have been killed or disappeared since the start of the year. The community turned over the five detained men to state police, only to see them later released without charge. Schools in the town have been closed since Easter and the local economy – largely built around cattle and timber – has been hamstrung since the blockade began on April 15...more