Community Defense and Criminal Order in Michoacán: Contention in the Grey Area

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X17719066
• Published date: 01 November 2018
• Author: Antonio Fuentes Díaz
• Date: 01 November 2018
• Subject Matter: ArticlesGovernance

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 223, Vol. 45 No. 6, November 2018, 127–139

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X17719066

© 2017 Latin American Perspectives

127

Community Defense and Criminal

Order in Michoacán

Contention in the Grey Area

by

Antonio Fuentes Díaz

Translated by

Margot Olavarria

The self-defense groups of La Ruana and Tepalcatepec and other communities in the

Tierra Caliente of Michoacán, Mexico, emerged to oppose both the extortion and violence

of the local parastatal order of organized crime and the central state’s demands for their

disarming and dissolution. They represented a form of governmentality at the local level

in which various nonstate actors performed the functions of government, control, and

security in the grey area between legality and illegality.

Los grupos de autodefensa de La Ruana y Tepalcatepec, así como de otras comunidades

de tierra caliente en Michoacán, México, surgieron para contrarrestar las extorsiones y

violencia del orden local paraestatal formado por el crimen organizado, así como las exi-

gencias de desarme y disolución del estado central. Representaban una forma de gobern-

abilidad a nivel local, con varios actores no estatales haciendo las veces de gobierno, control

y seguridad en un área gris entre lo legal y lo ilegal.

Keywords: Self-defense, Organized crime, Drug trafficking, Security, Violence,

Mexico

In the first months of 2013, armed groups organized for the defense of com-

munities and their territories against the extortion and violence perpetrated by

organized crime emerged in several rural communities in the state of Michoacán,

Mexico. The phenomenon gained notoriety for its rapid proliferation in the

region: in six months, there were 36 defense groups in the country, 24 of them

in Michoacán. Beginning in the 1990s, organization for community defense had

been inspired by the sense of insecurity fostered by ordinary crime in the con-

text of collusion and neglect on the part of state institutions in providing secu-

rity and justice and the transformation of economic and social relations. The

increase in crime, the economic crisis, and the liberalization of the prices of

some agricultural products since the North American Free Trade Agreement

(NAFTA) went into effect in 1994 had resulted in vulnerability for various seg-

ments of the rural and urban population (Boltvinik and Hernández, 1999;

Antonio Fuentes Díaz is an instructor in the graduate program in sociology of the Institute of

Social Science and Humanities of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma of Puebla. Margot

Olavarria is a translator living in New York City.

719066LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X17719066Latin American PerspectivesFuentes / Community Defense and Criminal Order in Michoacán

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