Without Autodefensas: Fear Returns to Yurécuaro say Residents

Borderland Beat

 "We enjoyed two months of freedom, then the government came to remove it"

The meeting is closed because fear has returned to Yurécuaro. Of the self-defense members who were here, there are now only empty barricades and a house with traces of gunfire from The Knights Templar.

After a torrent of testimonies about abuse--at the hands of both the authorities and the criminals--members of the citizen council, who had backed the short-lived self-defense movement in this town bordering on Jalisco, concluded:

''We enjoyed two months of freedom, and the federal government came to remove it.'' 

The brief summary goes like this: 

• January 28: A self-defense group emerged in this remote Tierra Caliente town (Guadalajara is an hour and a quarter away).
• Within two weeks: The Templars, who had ''terrorized'' the region for five years, had left the area.
• March 22: Gustavo Garibay, PAN [National Action Party] Mayor of Tanuato--Municipality to which Yurécuaro belongs--was killed; Garibay had been the victim of an attack that occurred in 2012; he was also a victim of official neglect whose escort [bodyguards] took off [when he was attacked].
• Monday, March 31: Alfredo Castillo Cervantes, Federal Commissioner for Michoacán, solved the crime in a press conference, where he announced that the perpetrators were three members of the Yurécuaro self-defense group, and that Enrique Hernández Salcedo, founder of the group, was the mastermind.  The supposed motive: Mayor Garibay had refused to support the self-defense group.

Hernández Salcido had been detained the previous Friday [March 28] by agents of the State Prosecutor [Public Ministry, made up of prosecutors and ministerial/investigative police], after they had come to believe that Hernández Salcido was participating in the investigations to capture Garibay's murderers.

For long days his family was not able to see him. When they were finally able to visit, they found him broken. Enrique had been tortured. Ministerial agents, say family members, wanted to force him to ''deliver'' three of his men and to sign a document where he incriminated them. When he refused, they covered his head with a plastic bag, poured water over him and beat him on the ears with their open palms.

April 9: In a radio interview, Lorenzo Corro, an official of the State Commission of Human Rights in Michoacán (CEDH), confirmed that the CEDH's medical staff had ''found that the injuries are consistent with the features of torture alluded to.''

The CEDH documented injuries to Hernández's neck, respiratory system and inner ear. The torture occurred, the CEDH official added, while Hernández was being transferred to prison.

April 14: The Attorney General's Office (PGR) reported that Yurécuaro self-defense members were being held on charges of organized crime in the form of terrorism. 

Mayor

Dr. José Manuel Mireles says:

''They set a trap for Enrique. It [government] brought three guys who were thugs. He [Enrique] sacked them. They [government] gave him some weapons. Then those are the ones that [tested] positive in Garibay's murder.''

Yanqui's Trap

After Garibay's assassination, the political pressures were strong. The PAN raised the volume of their criticism.

Commissioner Castillo personally came to this municipality to ask Enrique Hernández Salcedo to help get to the bottom of Garibay's murder. He knew Enrique's brother, Jesús, an employee of the City of Tanhuato first-hand, because they ordered him to call the helicopter that the Commissioner was never seen to get off.

''There was my brother with him, and they asked me for facts. I told them that Gustavo himself (the murdered mayor) had officially declared who the people were with whom he had had problems.''

Enrique trusted the Commissioner and agreed to coordinate with the official that they pointed out. The man asked to be called Yanqui, but his business cards carried the name of Adolfo Eloy Peralta. His position: Under Secretary of State for Public Security.

Last Thursday [April 17] in prison, Enrique gave his daughter a testimony in his own handwriting. It is the summary of what is related to this newspaper in a meeting by a group made up of shopkeepers, successful farmers, doctors, teachers, public employees.

Hernández relates that Yanqui and Commander Arturo of the Ministerial [Investigative] Police, ''showed me an investigation with photos and legal proof,'' in which Ernesto Sánchez, alias Pons, was identified as the mastermind. Ernesto Sánchez

''was the PRI council member. Commander Arturo said that they had recorded evidence of plans and death threats.''

According to city council members, the Pons was reported by Garibay himself as the person who ordered the 2012 attack against him.

According to Hernández, he reached an agreement with Yanqui and Commander Arturo in which he would help look for the guns and the pickup truck that had been used in the crime.

''We spent several days touring villages and asking people known [trusted], who gave us clues about the people from Jalisco.''

In the same testimony, Hernández states that they finally found two guns, which were delivered by a person named Enrique Morando, El Makinga. Enrique Morando is one of those reported by Castillo as a perpetrator.

Once in possession of the weapons, Yanqui himself arrested Enrique and his men.

A Map for the Commissioner

In February, Michoacán Deputy [to Congress] Selene Vázquez met with Commissioner Castillo to bring several cases to his attention. One of them refers to the self-defense members from Aquila, who are imprisoned.

''He didn't even know where the town was. We had to bring him a map.''

To deal with the case of Yurécuaro, the Deputy was accompanied by Mayor Rigoberto López: they argued that Hernández's self-defense group was weak, and that the town is far from the area of influence of the self-defense groups. On the border between Jalisco and Michoacán, Yurécuaro is in an area where the territory is disputed between The Templars and the Jalisco cartel.

The municipal mayor asked Castillo that the municipal police might be sent to ''training,'' as has happened in other districts with the presence of self-defense groups, and that the security of the district remain in the hands of the Federal Police.

Members of the city council say that the request was motivated by the fact that the mayor feared that the municipal police--infiltrated by the mafia--might act against the self-defense groups. Castillo delegated the case to one of his associates, named Mildred. Weeks passed. Deputy Vázquez says:

"He did nothing.''

El Mapache [The Raccoon] and the Men of Courage

Among the achievements of Yurécuaro's short-lived self-defense group is having caught a Templar lieutenant nicknamed El Mapache, who not only gave details about their leaders, but also about the structure of official support that linked municipal police, and it was videotaped.

El Mapache was one of those responsible for instructing business people and shopkeepers whom the gangsters in the Los Pinos balneario [hot springs resort] had designated for an 'appointment'. One producer, who last December alone paid 40,000 pesos [$3,065 USD] of ''cuota'' [protection money], said:

''The lookouts (halcones, hawks) came to advise you in the morning and if you didn't go, they sent armed men to your house.''

For him, Enrique's fate was sealed by the fact of his having videotaped El Mapache's confession.

In one corner of the town center the remains of Yurécuaro's short-lived self-defense group survive: traces of bullets on the facade of the tortilla shop, some small barricades on the street corners and a message to the government:

''Return to the people those men of courage who have defended them.''

Source: La Jornada Translation by Jane Brundage