Residents of a southern Mexican town managed to force a
fearsome gang to free a man on Wednesday after villagers brazenly
abducted the mother of the criminal group’s leader.
The unusual standoff was resolved with both sides releasing
their captives in Guerrero, a state mired in drug violence and
kidnappings that often end with the victims turning up dead or never
reappearing.
The gang known as Los Tequileros (The Tequila Drinkers) has
made a business out of kidnapping people in a remote region of Guerrero,
but fed-up townspeople in San Miguel Totolapan rebelled after an
engineer was snatched on Sunday.
The residents formed a vigilante group and detained around
20 people, including the mother of Raybel Jacobo de Almonte, the head of
Los Tequileros who is himself known as “El Tequilero” (The Tequila
Drinker).
The engineer’s wife appeared in a video on Tuesday,
demanding that Almonte release her husband “safe and sound” in return
for the gang leader’s mother.
The residents upped the ante on Wednesday, releasing a video
showing a woman identified as Almonte’s elderly mother, Maria Felix de
Almonte Salgado, who pleaded with her son to release the engineer,
Isauro de Paz Duque.
“Son, if you have (De Paz), hand him over, please. If you
have him, I know that you are going to hand him over. Do it, please,”
said the mother, stone-faced and sitting in a room without her hands
tied.
After De Paz was reunited with his family, the residents
released Almonte’s mother to police, the state government said in a
statement.
The residents were still holding 19 people they accuse of
colluding with Los Tequileros but the government said it expects them to
be released to the police “in the coming hours.”
‘Satisfying’
Some 220 soldiers and police were deployed to San Miguel
Totolapan this week to avoid a confrontation and the government said the
security forced were still in the area.
“It is satisfying to inform that the engineer Isauro de Paz
Duque, who was kidnapped, is now with his family,” Governor Hector
Astudillo wrote on Twitter.
A video has circulated on YouTube showing the vigilantes
carrying weapons and explaining that they took up arms in response to
crimes committed by Los Tequileros.
“They have humiliated us. They have killed our families and we won’t let it happen again,” one of the vigilantes says.
Guerrero has endured years of violence linked to turf wars
between drug cartels fighting for control of the state’s opium poppy and
heroin production areas.
Farmers and villagers in Guerrero and the neighboring state
of Michoacan formed vigilante groups in recent years to combat crime in
their towns.
Fed up with police incompetence or unwillingness to act, the
self-defense groups have detained criminal suspects in the past, but
kidnapping a gang leader’s mother is unheard of.
The emergence of such citizen militias have raised concerns
that they could be infiltrated by drug cartels and fuel more violence.
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