Mexico: Leader of Vigilante Group Arrested for Suspected Murder

Hipolito Mora, 58, is the leader of the first self-defense group—“Los Alzados”— in the state of Michoacán. The group emerged as a backlash to the Knights Templar cartel’s control over the region. 

The Knights Templar cartel has been operating in Michoacán for years, blamed for violence, killings, extortion and a monopoly over lime growers and the mining industry. 

Vigilante groups have sprung up, developed by civilians to protect the region and regain the control that authorities had lost. 

Mora’s arrest has sparked concerns that groups that began as an initiative for peace may have joined the violent conflict over money and power. 

The bodies of Rafael “El Pollo” Sanchez and Jose Luis “Nino” Torres  were found in a burned-out pickup truck on Saturday in the community 18 de Marzo, a territory controlled by vigilantes. 

The arrest has been questioned by Mora’s allies, who have defended his innocence and contended that he is a victim of conspiracy for having denounced the involvement of the other self-defense groups with drug cartels.

The issue for Mexican authorities is to determine which groups are clean and actually fighting the Templars, and which have become corrupt and involved with the cartel. 

The New York Times reports that Rául Benítez Manaut, a security analyst at Mexico’s National Autonomous University has said, “The government should be very careful…they can’t start arresting vigilantes indiscriminately, because people expect them to arrest Templarios, not vigilantes.”