Uprising of Churumuco (courtesy borderlandbeat.com)

When Uncle Sam bitched and moaned about the “iron river” of illegal guns heading south from US gun stores to arm Mexico’s cartels, TTAG called bullsh*t. For one thing, the cartels have hundreds of thousands of guns from decades of “legal” arms sales to South American governments, mostly from the United States. It’s called seepage or, if you prefer, U.S. taxpayer donations. For another, Fast and Furious, wherein the feds enabled the very thing that they were bitching and moaning about. And lastly, Mexicans need guns! To defend themselves against the cartels, corrupt cops and “rogue” government troops. Mexicans don’t have an uninfringable right to keep and bear arms, so they can’t tool-up legally. So . . . they tool-up illegally. Given mass murder of innocents, why wouldn’t they? Wouldn’t you? Make the jump for borderlandbeat.com info on the burgeoning “self-defense” movement of . . . wait for it . . . citizen militias . . .

Written by Charbell Lucio. Republisher here by permission.

Churumuco, Michoacán—The General Council of the Self-Defense Groups, led by Dr. José Mireles Valverde, attested on Sunday morning the armed uprising and the emergence of a new self-defense group in the municipality of Churumuco in Michoacán. This occurs, just after December 20th when the leader of the self-defense movement in Michoacán said that the movement will continue to expand and that they’ll support all the municipalities in the state who want to “uprise” against organized crime.

Members of Mexican "Self-Defense" movement (courtesy borderlandbeat.com)

It was on Sunday, with the presence of local leaders from Tepalcatepec, Buenavista and Aguililla, led by Mireles Valverde, when citizens of Churumuco gathered in the courtyard of the city hall where they were invited to join the newly formed self-defense group. There, the doctor said that there are three other municipalities in sight: Huetamo, Nueva Italia and Apatzingán. Meanwhile in the long term they also contemplate to reach the state capital, Morelia.

 

 Hanging out, protecting what's theirs (courtesy borderlandbeat.com)

Even though the governor, Fausto Vallejo, has previously said that the expansion of the self-defense movement will not be permitted, the leader assures that there is no will by the government to stop them, or to guarantee the safety of the people in arms. Contrary to what is said by the governor, the phenomenon has spread to nearly 60 communities throughout dozens of municipalities in the Tierra Caliente region in Michoacán.

 

 God made man. Goat horns make them equal (courtesy borderlandbeat.com)

Churumuco, as well as Zicuirán and Chaus, villages of the municipality of La Huacana, and San Juan Nuevo of the municipality of Parangaricutiro, are the most recent or “the latest territories liberated of organized crime”. To date, The list of municipalities liberated are: Buenavista Tomatlán, Tepalcatepec, Aguililla, Aquila, Coalcomán, Chinicuila, Los Reyes, Tancítaro, La Huacana, and Vista Hermosa. However, it is known that groups of armed civilians maintain their presence in at least three more municipalities where they are ready to uprise at any time.

The right to armed self-defense is a natural right (courtesy borderlandbeat.com)

In addition, the aim is to extend the movement to the municipalities of Apatzingán, Múgica, Nueva Italia, Ario de Rosales and Morelia.

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94 COMMENTS

  3. I knew Mexico was not the gun free paradise that people claimed, but holy shitake mushrooms! You couldn’t get that many AKs together in some parts of America!

    • I asked one of my Mexican friends what kind of guns one can have in Mexico. “Whatever you can afford.” He found it pretty funny that i thought that the laws might actually hold any sway whatsoever.

    • For some crazy reason people seem to want more for used parts kit AK’s than new entry level AR’s. I wouldn’t even own the one I have now if it hadn’t dropped on sale for $399 during Thanksgiving. If there weren’t that stupid sporting clause we could get AK’s for what they are really worth for legit importers (being the most numerous rifle in a world where most of the population can’t legally own them) and not after having new receivers made, stocks removed, replaced with thumbholes, then reattached, and gas block flash hiders and pins removed.

  4. Lots of AKs, and lots of people determined to protect themselves, their families, and their communities. Good for them!

  5. Sooner or later (and probably sooner) the Mexican people are going to realize they also have a right to defend themselves, their families, and their property against the corrupt Mexican government. And when that happens, the next Mexican revolution will begin.

    • Why do you think that the Mexican government wants this movement stopped? Pretty soon, these brave men will realize that the government is more harmful to them than any drug cartel.

      Which also, incidentally, explains why armed citizens are so abhorrent to many members of our own government.

  7. There are a lot of great people in the sh1thole that Mexico has become. I wish them well. I think they can take their country back, and their lives back too.

    • Pardon me – scary old farts with grey whiskers and big bellies toting AKs! Makes one proud to be an armed old fart.

      • Yes, but are they exercising properly five days a week and training in hand to hand CQB? What about their diet? Need to cut back on the frijoles and tequila!

        • Frijoles and tequila have fueled many a revolution, my friend! All the major food groups are present: fiber, carbohydrates and release from inhibitions…

      • The ability to march and run is highly over rated. The steel to go out, hide and shoot are much more useful in a revolution.

      • Don’t pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he’ll just kill you.
        -Clint Smith

  9. apparently all those weapons they took from the cartels. if you’ve been watching Michoacan, six months ago you’d see the same pictures, but they all had shotguns and hunting rifles instead.

    • Correct. The cartels send killers in and they never come back out. It’s kinda like a supply run with lousy retirement benefits…

    • I wonder if The Govt sides with.the people, the cartels, or sits it out and mops of.the survivors. Kinda almost reminds me of Poland at the end of WWII, people rose up to fight the Nazis, The Soviets let them do the bleeding then moved in and killed any remaining leadership so they could take over.

      • That’s some good info, lets go back and rewrite history. If it wasn’t for the great Polish resistance, we’d all be speaking German now.

  12. On one hand, it is good that the communities are ready and willing to clean out the filth and guard their homes.

    On the other hand, I see an awful lot of young men in those photos, dressed up like they’re going for war. Which might well be the case, but the question remains, what are they going to do once the war is over, and wandering around with an AK and a load bearing vest full of mags is no longer meaningful? Past experience elsewhere shows that unless an effective government system can be organized by the people to fill the power vacuum, the militias often become racketeers themselves, demanding money to support themselves for the sake of “protection”.

    So I hope they do have a plan beyond just lining up the cartel thugs against the nearest wall. They’re pretty open about saying that the government has utterly failed them in its most basic function, that of providing security; I hope they do understand that the logical conclusion from that is that they need to form their own government.

    • “Which might well be the case, but the question remains, what are they going to do once the war is over”

      whatever dude, their chidren- daughters being raped and sons killed……

      First things first……

      • Don’t get me wrong, if the kind of stuff that I’ve seen on the video was going on in my community, with no help from the authorities forthcoming, I’d be the first to grab my AK and vest and go gather a posse.

        Still, you have to think long-term. It would really suck to save your daughter from the drug lords to then have her raped a year later by thugs formed out of the militia who kicked the drug lords out. The trick here is to not let people with guns forget that they’re citizens first and foremost, not some special elite armed force that’s separate and distinct from “civilians” (like many cops started to think in US today – and we’re seeing the results of that). Militias should never forget that their guns are meant to be used to uphold the rule of law, not to substitute for it.

        • If you’ve followed the self-defence movement in Mexico, especially on the West coat, you know that when the government came over the last year, they tried to disarm the citizens without handling the cartels that were extorting the town. Finally the towns had to start forbidding entry of the Federales as well.

          Once it turned out that the federal government was going to disarm the towns, but not the cartels (too dangerous and it hurts the cash flow) the townspeople realized that they’d better blow the dowry on a better firearm. So out come the AK’s etc. The die has been cast.

        • Like I said, if their existing government cannot maintain the rule of law, then it’s time for a new government.

          I just hope it doesn’t end up like say Libya, where the whole country is now split up into turfs of armed gangs who collect tolls from the peasants and occasionally fight each other for control.

    • While gangs of armed young men without a purpose are certainly a problem so long as these show deference and respect for their elders (something still held in esteem in Mexico) they will do fine.

  14. This is all well and good and I applaud the effort of these people against seemingly insurmountable odds.

    That said there has to be a master plan somewhere, if not it is all doomed to failure. You have to get the whole nation on track, and that is not easy, You have to get the leaders of each individual movement to agree to a common goal.

    I wish them the best though.

    • I always loved the late Ed Abbey said about illegal immigrants: he said that the Border Patrol needed to be beefed up. And he thought that each illegal (or “would-be” immigrant) caught should be given a modern assault rifle and a backpack full of ammunition, and instructed to “go back and fix your own government!”

    • They really do not need to get the whole nation on track, I think that is just too much to ask. They want to get their own neighborhoods and communities to be reasonably safe places to live and work. That should be enough and if they succeed then their neighbors will be willing to try and eventually things may work out for the nation. In the meantime, barring interference from the Federales, they will be safe in their homes.

  15. These are the type of people that need our country’s support, not the drug warlords of Afghanistan.

    • This. Americans would be amazed to know, though, how much in Mexico is owned by other Americans. They would be shocked to know how much of the finances of various recent presidents of Mexico (as in Swiss finances) have been managed by American attorneys and aided in their transfers by US banks. The tip of the iceberg came up during Raul’s trial…and sudden exoneration. I suppose the trade off has been allowing immigration. During WWII we and the Mexican government constantly were in conflict over mexican labor. It wasn’t because we didn’t want the illegals. It was because the Mexican government felt we were draining their agricultural labor supply. What a world.

      • And if you go back a little bit further, to the Mexican-American War, it’s even funnier: a lot of people campaigned for a complete annexation of Mexico, not stopping with Texas and Northern California – and not as a dependent territory, but actually chopping it up into states and admitting those into the Union. It failed largely on racial grounds back then.

        I can’t help but wonder if both Mexico and US would be better off if that idea was actually carried through.

        • It’s hard to maintain that the Mexican people wouldn’t have been better off, as abhorrent as the idea of “annexing” what was then a sovereign nation. Now it is anything BUT “sovereign”. It’s a failed narco-terrorist state.

  16. The Mexican government has gone around trying (and failing) to disarm them… just like they failed to disarm the drug cartels that are terrorizing their fair citizens.

    Just another big, “No, fuck you!” to Calderon.

      • Regardless, Calderon is related, by blood mind you, to who was the leader of one of the major players down there. Can’t remember if it was the Zetas or the Sina Loa. Doesn’t really matter anyway, ’cause they can all rot in Hell as far as I’m concerned.

        Plus, does it really matter who gets elected there? It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that not only is the voter turn-out horrible, but whoever gets the job only does so with the cartel’s “blessings”.

        It is a perfect, textbook example of a failed state.

        And don’t even get me started on the other warlords that we’re directly enabling in the Middle East, either.

    • They didn’t fail to disarm the cartels.

      Saying they failed gives the false implication that they TRIED.

    • And, they are necessary to the security of a free state.

      I know I’ve read that somewhere…

      • Which is why it’s vital that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Every individual who values Liberty ought to be mindful of this.

  18. “wherein the feds enabled the very thing that they were bitching and moaning about.”

    “Enabled”? They out-and-out did it themselves!

  20. Almost all of those AKs are old as dirt and have a third pin for FA. Only one I see that could maybe be an FF gun is a Draco pistol.

    Just goes to show, people will always get the things they need/want regardless of laws, and much to the chagrin of gun banners, guns can travel across borders by boat and plane.

  22. Notice that all of those armed citizens are wearing masks in that first photo. They are wearing masks because Mexico’s government considers them as criminals for arming themselves to stop actual criminals from raping their wives and daughters and killing their families. Remember, this is what the Communists Progressives want in this country.

    Now, imagine if we were similarly disarmed and a violent criminal busts through your door tonight. For tens of millions in the path of today’s winter storm, calling 911 will be pointless. Even police with the best of intentions will be unable to respond to calls for help when ice or 9+ inches of new snow has made roads impassable.

  24. A lot of us [generally] conservative gun owners in the U.S. here whine about Mexicans crossing the border and coming to live in our country without the permission of their government (which they need before they can even ask for our government’s permission).

    Yet look at the things they have to face that we don’t. And they cross deserts. They work ankle-deep in cow manure all day to feed their families. They arm themselves against oppression in spite of laws to the contrary. They go out and fight. They are more “American” than most of us, and despite the fact that illegal immigration cause problems, they deserve some SERIOUS respect from us.

    • Bear in mind that “legal” and “illegal” are only what you make them to be. For example, it used to be illegal to load more than 7 rounds in a 10-round magazine for several months in NY.

      If you look at the history of immigration, in the “good old days” of weak federal government, there was no such thing as a visa. People came, usually by boat, went and settled somewhere, and after living and working and paying their taxes for some period of time (a year in most places, but it could be anywhere from 6 months to 4 years), they became a citizen of the state they were residing in – and, by extension, a citizen of the United States of America.

      The first laws limiting immigration were enacted under pressure from the nascent trade unions who were afraid of competition from cheap labor undermining their wage – first it was Irish immigrants who were “willing to work for wages no self-respecting American worker would tolerate”, and shortly after it was Italians – and back in the day being Catholic would make you a target of bigots of all stripes (cuz everyone knows that a Catholic’s first allegiance is always to the Pope, so they can’t be trusted to not undermine the Republic, you know). Then Chinese joined the game, and those same unions started to push for excluding them now on “scientific racism” basis (cuz white race is the smartest and most industrious of all, and we can’t have those yellow freaks polluting our society, you know). At some point US actually banned naturalization of anyone who was not a White. Where we are now is obviously a rollback from that low point, but you still have to wonder if it’s at the right point where it’s at.

  26. Now they just need some music talking about how good it is to fight the cartels instead of songs glorifying them. I see a lot o bad stuff here, they need some military advisors aka green berets to educate them in guerrilla warfare. No one is in uniform so anyone can be a target if the SHTF. Another thing is that this has a big chance of going sour real quick, lets just hope they stay honest and dont change their ways if all this dies down and they have defeated the cartels. Other than that, this makes me proud of Mexico.

    • “…green berets to educate them in guerrilla warfare.”

      Educate them about what? How to get around the places they were born and raised in? How to do fancy hand-to-hand combat because they were trained to wait to shoot the bandidos until it was too late? How to receive CIA “aid?” They’re interested in securing their house, their neighborhood, and their town. In that order. Want to help? Send them ammo.

  27. This, it seems, is what happens when the people wake up from the dream that some far off federal government can protect them and provide for their every need. Give the US inner city population, the honest ones, a little time and see if they don’t do something similar. Out here, on the periphery, we’re already geared up like these gentlemen, not every day, but the tools are there. Perhaps in time the people who actually need such tools will avail themselves of them and drive the scum out.

    • “Dream”, indeed… we have some people at TTAG who need to awake from the dream, too.

      “Friends in government”. HAH!

  28. In many ways Mexico has the government that our founding fathers wanted. A weak federal government with a slightly stronger state government. The government in many ways actually fears it’s people and not the other way around. Unfortunately the weak state governments and the federal government has been bought by cartels. There may be ‘laws’ regarding firearms in Mexico, but with that said, my wife’s grandfather has a better gun collection than i do…

    A few years ago when La Familia, Sinaloa and Los Zetas were fighting in Northern Michoacan, it wasn’t uncommon for the cartels to put up roadblocks going into and out of towns, send a hit team in to execute a few people then leave. They would capture, torture and hang people from bridges. Finally the people got sick of it and kicked the cartels out. Hence the rise of the self defense movement. Lots of good people in Mexico. I wish them the best.

    • “Unfortunately the weak state governments and the federal government has [sic] been bought by cartels. ”

      And this is different from the US in what way?

  29. The Mexican Self Defense forces have bigger nads than the people of Chicago. Imagine that….

  31. Viva la Mexico!

    I read the comments, and nobody asked this question, who will the Obama administration support? The Corrupt Govt? The Cartels? The Citizens?

    My guess is the cartels will be ignored, dont kill the goose that lays the golden eggs (people in our Govt are getting a slice of the pie, even if it never goes to court).

    Our Govt will support Mexico Govt in a show of solidarity to reduce violence and drugs, for the children.

    The Citizen shop keepers and farmers will get drone strikes for taking up arms to defend his rights of peace, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, because he broke a law and is now a criminal and must be punished because – for the children.

    At that point, well, it could get ugly fast, on both sides of the border.

    Mexico is a failed police state, we live in a ascendent police state. I fear we will live in interesting times.

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