Justification for Vigilantism in Southwest Mexico: Cartel Organ Theft Uncovered

The civilian self-defense militias in Michoacan State in southwest Mexico that sprang up with unprecedented, heroic force earlier this year have been much documented on this blog, and in the mainstream press.  They have been described as folk heroes. They have been described by the Economist Magazine (here) as a threat to civil order with dire predictions and comparisons to the right-wing militias in Peru and Colombia that began as forces to fight traffickers and later misused their power.

Michoacan Self-Defense Forces

Less considered has been exactly what pushed them over the edge to take up arms against a cartel, the Knights Templar, which had near-total de facto control over most of the state apparatus.  The Knights Templar – before the self-defense forces went on the offensive – had control over the port, were drug trafficking, were extorting not only shop-keepers, but also farmers, ranchers and miners. (Background here)

News has just come out about a much darker, much more sinister form of crime that the Knights Templar were engaged in: kidnapping children, killing them and harvesting their organs. 

This is not science fiction. This is true.

The Mexican Attorney General’s office and the police in Michoacan, which has been fortified by the Mexican armed forces, have arrested the number-two of the Knights Templar, and the nephew of the head of the cartel, on suspiction of kidnapping children to harvest their organs. As reported by Al Jazeera   (and others): Manuel Plancarte Gaspar was accused by police on Monday of being part of the cartel’s organ-trafficking ring and the state attorney general's office said he was "under investigation for the death of minors, whose organs were extracted to be sold."  Michoacan's public safety secretary Castellanos Becerra said the ring would kidnap children and take them to homes fitted with medical equipment where they were killed and their organs removed.

The leader of a local self-defense group fighting against the cartel said that several children from Mexico City, who were on a beach outing, had been rescued in a refrigerated container inside a van, tightly wrapped in blankets.

When one wonders what sort of horrors would make ordinary people rise up against an organized, international drug cartel, having your children kidnapped and killed for their organs is the kind of horror that would do it.  That is the kind of evil which is nothing short of incomprehensible. If that is allowed to go, there is no point in living. There is every reason to fight, no matter what the cost, because, if you don’t fight, everything is lost.  That is the kind of total breakdown of the civil order which requires vigilantism.  It is the kind of evil for which the repercussions of having militias, and the long-term potential effects of them (as in Colombia or Peru) is worth the risk. Because the alternative, doing nothing, is impossible to comprehend.  It is almost as impossible to comprehend as the act itself.  Except that it has happened and the people have risen up to stomp it out.  Fortunately, too late, the government has reasserted itself to aid in the fight.