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92 Foreign Aff. 143 (2013)
The Rise of Mexico's Self-Defense Forces: Vigilante Justice South of the Border

handle is hein.journals/fora92 and id is 979 raw text is: The Rise of Mexico's Self-Defense Forces Vigilante Justice South of the Border Patricio Asfura-Heim and Ralph Espach na Tuesday morning in March, with rifles slung over their shoulders, some 1,500 men filed into the Mexican town of Tierra Colorada, which sits on the highway from Mexico City down to the Pacific coast. They seized at gunpoint 12 police officers and a local security official, whom they believed responsible for the murder of their commander. They set up roadblocks, and when a car of Acapulco-bound beachgoers refused to stop, they opened fire and injured a passenger. This was not the work of a drug cartel. The men were members of a self-defense group, one of a growing number of vigilante organizations aiming to restore order to Mexican communities. We have besieged the municipality, said a spokesperson for the group, because here criminals operate with impunity in broad daylight. Mexico has suffered staggering levels of violence and crime during the country's seven-year-long war against the cartels. The fighting has killed 90,000 people so far, a death toll larger than that of the civil war in Syria. Homicide rates have tripled since 2007. In an effort to stem the carnage, Mexican President Enrique Pefia Nieto announced last December that the federal government, having struggled to defeat the cartels using corrupt local police and an inadequate military, would create an elite national police force of 10,000 officers by the end of this year. PATRICIO ASFURA-HEIM is a specialist on irregular warfare at CNA's Center for Strategic Studies. He served as an adviser on civilian governance and the rule of law for the U.S. Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. RALPH ESPACH is Director of the Latin American Affairs Program at CNA. He is a co-author, with Joseph Tulchin, of Latin America in the New International System. July/August 2013 143

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