THE BORDER REPORT
The idea seems sound, groups of business owners banding together to take on the criminals who engage in kidnapping and extorting their businesses; bring a vigilante justice to the cities of Mexico.
So far, the idea has been floated throughout the northern state of Chihuahua, Pancho Villa territory, in cities like Cd. Juárez and Parral.
In Parral, a group of merchants and cattle ranchers banded together after the two sons of a cattle baron and a ranch hand were kidnapped.
In Cd. Juárez, the Comando Ciudadano por Juárez intends to kill one criminal a day if the city can’t bring back at least some semblance of order.
Reuters reports two murder cases where messages were left on the bodies of the dead men. “This is for those who continue extorting,” reads one. “A message for all rats,” the other.
Maybe it’s the work of the Citizens’ Commando, and maybe it’s simply narcos hiding behind a façade of vigilantism while they continue to smoke each other. It could go either way though killers seem to rarely be captured in Juárez these days; in fact, they seem to operate with impunity.
The Citizen’s Commando has been loudly declaring itself – which instantly makes me suspicious. Between issuing press releases and holding public press conferences, they’re seeking attention from the media, which, of course, cannot ignore this story. It’s too rich, citizens fighting back, getting some of what they’ve taken for years.
It sounds right, but I have to wonder what the real motive is behind this latest movement.
Vigilantism has a deep history along the U.S.-Mexico, a land that traditionally has had little infrastructure in place. Assuming that the Citizens’ Commando isn’t a complete fraud, I hope they go away.
Juárez and the border in general is no place for them, they simply cannot compete and I doubt they have the resources and the blood-lust that a right and proper vigilante movement requires.
I’ve seen the frauds before, the over-hyped Minuteman Project on the border was the last one. That crew of jokers would have run terrified if they’d ever actually encountered Sinaloan backpackers trucking a load across the Huachuca Mountains of eastern Arizona. These days, the group has fallen apart, splitting into factions, mostly using the Internet to promote themselves as a lobbying group.
Before they retreated into irrelevance, the Minuteman Project managed to inject a shot of hope into those who wanted some order returned to the border. What they did was something else entirely. For several years, the group took donations, promising to erect impenetrable fences along the Arizona-Sonora border. The most I ever saw were fresh strands of silvery barb-wire stapled up along the edge of some ranch land. And a lot of donations. A lot.
But let’s assume for a moment that the Citizens’ Commando is legitimate.
I hope, for their sake, that they break at the first real scare they’re faced with. And I really hope that some of that Mexican machismo doesn’t leak out while they’re blustering for the cameras. Because if these businessmen and ranchers think they are equipped to deal with the repercussions of taking on low-level members of the Juárez and Sinaloa cartels, they have lost their minds.
Let’s put aside the question of firepower, of resources and reserves. Let’s just look at who’s going to blink first.
There’s last week’s Tijuana whack-job who claimed to have dissolved 300 bodies in acid before he was captured.
How much of that was posturing and how much of that was true is another story. But that’s not the kind of accounting a rational man will admit to.
In Phoenix, a crew of Sinaloan kidnappers punctured the rectum of a victim with a clothes rod, trying to get his wife to kick over a ransom. Some of the kidnappers escaped to Mexico; last week, my contacts in Phoenix tell me, the killers came back; and they’re looking for the victims again.
In Mexicali, a few weeks ago, a 19-year-old man was arrested as a hitman working for a cell of the Beltrán Leyvas. Hitmen images always conjure up some suave killer in a top-brand shirt, black gloves, precision weapons, murdered-out cars. This guy was killing people for $300 a hit.
I hope this Citizens’ Commando takes one good scare and dissipates, retreating back to trying and lead a normal life in Juárez.
And don’t even talk to me of embarrassing the city administration into taking back control of Juárez.
The war is out of their hands now. It’s out of the mayor’s hands and it’s out of the army’s hands. A vigilante movement in the fractured days following Amado Carrillo’s death may have worked. But it’s too late now. You’re just going to have to hope for a winner.
