One of the last leaders of Mexico’s anti-gang citizens’ movement was buried on Saturday alongside two of his faithful followers, and any hope of reviving armed civilian resistance to drug cartels probably died with them.
“Self-defense” vigilante leader Hipolito Mora had long since ceased to pose an armed threat to the cartel that dominates western Mexico’s Michoacan state, as was clear from the overwhelming, deadly, multipoint ambush in which he and three followers were slain on Thursday.
While some angry relatives talked of reviving the 2013-2014 armed farmers’ movement that kicked out one cartel — only to see it replaced by others — many doubted that heroic, tragic chapter could ever be repeated.
Photo: AP
“I think it’s not a question of reviving the past,” said the Reverend Gilberto Vergara, one of the priests who officiated the funeral Mass for Mora and his followers, Calixto Alvarez and Roberto Naranjo. The third follower was buried elsewhere.
“The circumstances have changed, they’re different, and we saw how everything ended,” he said.
Mora had said that the 2013 movement, in which farmers and ranchers banded together to resist constant threats and extortion from the Knights Templar cartel, wound up infiltrated by members of other drug gangs.
The cartel now dominating the state, alternately called the Viagras or the United Cartels, “is worse than the ones who were here before,” said Mora’s brother, Guadalupe Mora Chavez.
“If the government and [Michoacan Governor Alfredo Ramirez] Bedolla don’t do something, there are possibilities the people will rise up in arms again,” the brother said.
Most at Mora’s wake were too afraid of cartel retaliation even to have their names appear in print.
“He looked out for his town, for his people, and that is something none of us is going to do,” his sister, Olivia Mora, said in a tearful address in front of his coffin.
“We all think first about our own families,” she said. “None of us are going to have the courage to do what he did.”
“I hope that something remains,” another of Hipolito Mora’s weeping female relatives said. “I hope his voice hasn’t been silenced.”
Hipolito Mora always spoke out against the cartels’ extortion of local farmers and lime growers, even after his hundreds of followers had been reduced to a handful.
The female relative, who asked that her name not be used, said the extortion has grown so bad that some growers are giving up their businesses, and locals sometimes are forced to pay double the price for basic goods.
The power of the drug cartels has only grown over the past decade. The Reverend Gregorio Lopez, a priest who was not present at the funeral, said that Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s policy of not confronting the cartels has allowed them to grow.
“The ‘hugs not bullets’ policy has been the perfect fertilizer for growing drug cartels across the country,” he said.
The overwhelming power of the cartels was visible in the bullet holes in the walls where Hipolito Mora and his bodyguards died.
The Michoacan state prosecutors’ office said that unidentified shooters cut off his vehicle and his bodyguards’ pickup truck on a street in La Ruana, Hipolito Mora’s hometown, then riddled his vehicle with bullets and set it on fire.
Residents of La Ruana, in the torrid agricultural belt of western Michoacan, turned out by the hundreds for the funeral.
At the local cemetery, Hipolito Mora and his two followers were laid to rest to the tune of the Joan Sebastian corrido ballad The General.
The lyrics go: “I have been a general a long time, and even though I am wounded, I never forget about my troops and they haven’t buried me yet.”
The cartels seem intent on squelching even nonviolent resistance.
“The narcos and the drug cartels are always going to try to get rid of anything that gets in their way,” Vergara said.
The time for armed self-defense movements is past, he said.
“Guns don’t help us, civilians shouldn’t carry guns,” Vergara said. “I think it is up to the government to do their duty.”
ELECTION DISTRACTION? When attention shifted away from the fight against the militants to politics, losses and setbacks in the battlefield increased, an analyst said Recent clashes in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Jubaland region are alarming experts, exposing cracks in the country’s federal system and creating an opening for militant group al-Shabaab to gain ground. Following years of conflict, Somalia is a loose federation of five semi-autonomous member states — Puntland, Jubaland, Galmudug, Hirshabelle and South West — that maintain often fractious relations with the central government in the capital, Mogadishu. However, ahead of elections next year, Somalia has sought to assert control over its member states, which security analysts said has created gaps for al-Shabaab infiltration. Last week, two Somalian soldiers were killed in clashes between pro-government forces and
Ten cheetah cubs held in captivity since birth and destined for international wildlife trade markets have been rescued in Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia. They were all in stable condition despite all of them having been undernourished and limping due to being tied in captivity for months, said Laurie Marker, founder of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, which is caring for the cubs. One eight-month-old cub was unable to walk after been tied up for six months, while a five-month-old was “very malnourished [a bag of bones], with sores all over her body and full of botfly maggots which are under the
BRUSHED OFF: An ambassador to Australia previously said that Beijing does not see a reason to apologize for its naval exercises and military maneuvers in international areas China set off alarm bells in New Zealand when it dispatched powerful warships on unprecedented missions in the South Pacific without explanation, military documents showed. Beijing has spent years expanding its reach in the southern Pacific Ocean, courting island nations with new hospitals, freshly paved roads and generous offers of climate aid. However, these diplomatic efforts have increasingly been accompanied by more overt displays of military power. Three Chinese warships sailed the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand in February, the first time such a task group had been sighted in those waters. “We have never seen vessels with this capability
‘NO INTEGRITY’: The chief judge expressed concern over how the sentence would be perceived given that military detention is believed to be easier than civilian prison A military court yesterday sentenced a New Zealand soldier to two years’ detention for attempting to spy for a foreign power. The soldier, whose name has been suppressed, admitted to attempted espionage, accessing a computer system for a dishonest purpose and knowingly possessing an objectionable publication. He was ordered into military detention at Burnham Military Camp near Christchurch and would be dismissed from the New Zealand Defence Force at the end of his sentence. His admission and its acceptance by the court marked the first spying conviction in New Zealand’s history. The soldier would be paid at half his previous rate until his dismissal
RSS