In January 2014, the Mexican so-called vigilante groups that operated in the central state of Michoacán celebrated one of their finest moments. After a fierce gun battle of several hours, a caravan of trucks loaded with members of this ragtag group of heavily armed farmers drove victoriously into the town of Nueva Italia and vanquished their mortal enemy, the Knights Templar cartel.
Spurred by massive media attention and the support of many Mexicans who considered them a symbol of defiance against corruption, impunity and organized crime, the self-defense militias had taken one of the last bastions of the Templars in the Tierra Caliente region and, with bravado, vowed to keep pushing until they would achieve what Mexico’s military and federal policy could not, or, as many of them claimed, would not.