Community Police in Guerrero : "We are the majority who want tranquility, this is another revolution"

Translated by El Profe for Borderland Beat from Debate

Photo: Pedro Pardo

Two brothers join the community police after being kidnapped by La Familia Michoacana in the state of Guerrero

Tlacotepec, Mexico, 12 Apr 2018 (AFP) - In the mountains of the violent Mexican state of Guerrero (south), an almost repetitive story is heard among the armed civilians patrolling the area: "I was kidnapped by organized crime and that's why I raise arms."

Juan Carlos Ramos, 30, tells that story. Immersed in the violent vortex of Guerrero with a balance of 2,318 murders in 2017 - the largest figure in all of Mexico, which recorded its bloodiest year in two decades - houses Teloloapan, his native town, with rifle in hand and pistol in his belt.

"I was kidnapped seven months by the Familia Michoacana , my brother was kidnapped four months," Ramos told AFP, referring to the criminal group that was operating in the neighboring state of Michoacán. I was just released by the military.

For Ramos, who usually works in a mechanic's shop and today is uniformed in khaki as if going to a battle in the desert, his kidnapping was reason enough to join his brother in the community police.

We are the majority who want tranquility, he says. "It's another revolution," adds his brother Luis Alberto, a 32-year-old transporter, also armed.

Members of the Guerrero Community Police attend a meeting in Tlacotepec, 
municipality of Heliodoro Castillo, Guerrero state, Mexico, 
on March 24, 2018. AFP

 Photo:AFP

In Guerrero, movements similar to community policing have been launched since 1995, when the Regional Coordinator of 
Community Authorities (CRAC) was created, which subsequently formed its own justice system.

With the wave of violence linked to organized crime, more groups of armed civilians appeared throughout the state with the aim of preventing the harassment of criminals.

"They kidnapped my wife, la Familia Michoacana, and then kidnapped my son," says Misael Figueroa, 46, a teacher who became one of Apaxtla's community police leaders.

For Figueroa, who speaks swiftly as if someone were chasing him, the community police "is a second revolution,” after the heroism of 1910 - the "Mexican Revolution" - when peasants rose up against a government completely removed from the popular classes, immersed in misery and marginalization.

In mid-March, hundreds of community police gathered in the town of Tlacotepec to demand that the state government put an end to the violence. There were Figueroa and the Ramos brothers.

The community filled the streets of the town carrying rustic rifles and even the occasional assault rifle. Some had, as if by instinct, their finger on the trigger, others let the gun rest on their back.

The three men arrived in pick-up trucks, marched through the drab streets where there were only two unarmed policemen until they reached a small bullring, where they heard the declamations of their leaders.

      

A member of the police community of Guerrero in an illegal field of 

poppies in Heliodoro Castillo, Guerrero,

 on March 25, 2018. AFP

Community Police patrolling neighborhoods in Heliodoro Castillo, March 25 2018.AFP

According to the coordinators, in the municipality of Heliodoro Castillo, where Tlacotepec is located, there are 1,500 community policemen. Together with those from nearby towns such as Mezcala, Cocula, Apaxtla and Teloloapan, they reach almost 7,000.

Many say they subsist on donations given by the communities they protect.

However, each group of community members has its particularities.

Some must face the constant onslaught of bands dedicated to kidnapping and extortion. Others act by bordering on criminality because several of its members admit that they cultivate poppy, from which opium gum is obtained, a precursor to heroin.

In Guerrero, also one of the poorest states in Mexico, poppy cultivation is the subsistence of many families.

One of the coordinators of the community police of Tlacotepec, whose identity is withheld for security reasons, accepts that in that town there is a group dedicated to the poppy with which they coexist peacefully. He does not kidnap or extort, he says, but "protects his people."

The armed community members accompany the AFP route through the poppy fields, whose picturesque view, with a pink hue, breaks the monotony of the landscape of the mountains.
The leader also claims that there are no options in that area of Guerrero.

“Bastards, how do not they put a fucking company here or a factory so that people no longer cultivate that thing?”
                      
                        Photo: AFP

Some 80 km from Tlacotepec, Misael Figueroa and other members of the Apaxtla community police have to fight kidnapping and extortion.

“The only thing we want is for us to return what we had, the peace of mind that we had,” he says while performing a night watch at a security post.

Several community members confess that they dream of setting aside their weapons and returning to their jobs.

"It is not a good life to be living with this tension,” says Laurencio Miranda, a 45-year-old teacher who now wears a vest, rifle and pistol.

"The authorities have their role, us, the pen and the tools,” she adds. 


But the time to put down the weapons in this state seems far away: in the first two months of 2018 there were 367 homicides in Guerrero.

"Someday, that's my hope, I'll be able to put away my weapon and live quietly," says Juan Carlos Ramos.