Self Help

Mexico is having some problems these days, largely as a result of it's inability to control criminal enterprises (read: drug cartels). The most extensive military services the Mexican armed forces has seen in years are happening right now, inside Mexico, in scenes not a lot unlike the pictures you see of peacekeeping Marines on patrol in Basra. Same basic job, and about the same risk: that someone you've never seen before, probably a misguided teenager, is going to toss a grenade at your feet, because he and his buddies have been told to do so by shadow criminal/political figure on high.

There are in fact entire cities which are under martial law, and these are not cities in the central-american hinterland. You can stand in El Paso, Texas, and see the fires burning in Juarez, just on the other side of the Rio Grande. They averaged about 7 murders per day there this year. Approximately 95% of crimes in the last three years remain unsolved. It's a fun town, and is just exemplary of the problem, not definitive of the problem. But for heavily policed areas, there's a lot of lawlessness. South of the Border, the maintenance of law and order is more wishful thinking than legitimate state of being.

Which is prompting an interesting grass-roots response, and the emergence of "self help" as an effective means of maintaining civil order. On September 21, 2010, a group of young men, masked and armed with assault rifles, stormed into a local seafood eatery in the Mexican town of Ascencion, in an attempt to abduct the 17-year old girl who was manning the register. The men - teenagers - were set upon by the local farmers and tradesmen in the restaurant and in the streets, who up to that point had been turning the other cheek to such sorts of lawlessness. But when they did finally rouse themselves to action that day, results were gotten. Some of the people in the vigilante crowds apparently suffered broken hands and wrists in the course of handing beat-downs on the would-be abductors.

Federal Police eventually arrived at the scene, pulled the suspects from the crowd, and locked them in the back of police vehicles. The crowd did not disperse. Although they did not attack the police, the crowd surrounded the police cars, chanting "KILL THEM! KILL THEM!" They refused to move out of the path of vehicles. They blocked the entry of other police vehicles onto the scene (including preventing helicopters from landing). They did eventually lose interest and allow the police vehicles to leave, but not until after the kidnappers died from the wounds inflicted on them by the crowds. In effect, the would-be kidnappers bled out there at the scene, sweltering inside the police vehicles. No charges have been filed against any members of the crowd.

Prior to September 21, Ascencion had suffered about 40 kidnappings in 2010, or an average of about one kidnapping a week. There haven't been any since then. Of couse, since the mobbing of the kidnappers on 9/21, the locals have dug a ditch around the town (too deep to traverse with any civilian vehicle), and erected a watchtower. They've instituted a neighborhood watch. As the main focus is to stop kidnappings, the game plan is simple: when citizens hear the big alarm on the tower, they drop what they're doing, walk out of the house, and stand in the highway that runs though the middle of town. They use their bodies to prevent people from leaving by the roadways, and the ditch prevents anyone from escaping (with, for example, a 15-year old kidnapped girl in their trunk) through other means.

There haven't been any published kidnapping attempts since then, and local honchos of the neighborhood watch say that if they catch anyone, they would turn those people over to the police. Of course, the kidnappers who died on September 21 were technically in the custody of police at the time of their deaths, so I don't think any would-be kidnappers would place a lot of faith in Due Process, should they get pinched. Especially since the body of a man suspected to be a local thief has subsequently been found on the edge of town in October.

I thought I would share all this, since it warms my heart to see people taking an active interest in local politics and law enforcement.