Los Caballeros Templarios (LCT, ‘Templar Knights’), a splinter of the Familia Michoacana gang, has been shown up as having no intention of honouring its recently announced withdrawal from criminal activities in Michoacán and leaving it up to the government and the law-enforcement agencies to “maintain the peace”. It had said that it would only continue to act against incursions from outsiders — an allusion to the growing presence of the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), currently an ally of the Sinaloa/Pacífico gang.
However, the LCT is still heavily involved in extortion across the state, targeting isolated rural communities (mainly indigenous) and confronting their attempts to set up armed ‘self-defence’ or ‘community police’ groups. A first-hand insight into this was provided by Luis Prados, a journalist with the Spanish newspaper, El País, who recently travelled to the lemon-growing community of La Ruana (population 10,000), in Michoacán’s Tierra Caliente region, where one such ‘self-defence’ group is struggling to survive after having expelled the LCT.
The LCT had imposed a system of cuotas (‘contributions’) ranging from US$8 per household and US$12 per terminal in videogame shops to US$160 for traffic violations. They had also taken control of La Ruana’s five lemon packing plants, promptly lowering the price paid to growers from US$0.28 to US$0.16 per kilo.
The people of La Ruana armed their traditional ‘community police’ and, after a series of shootouts that claimed 20 lives, drove out the LCT. Soon, though, they found themselves besieged by the LCT. Suppliers of consumer goods and fuel stopped arriving for fear of LCT checkpoints, which also ensured that people from La Ruana (identified by the voting documents) could not travel to the nearby by town of Apatzingán to shop there or seek medical attention.
To make matters worse, clandestine dealers apply a 33% surcharge to petrol delivered to the town. Prados says that two out of every three shops in La Ruana have had to close. Local people fear that they might end up facing the same fate as nearby Tepalcatepec, where at least a fifth of the population have migrated.
In nearby Buenavista Tomatlán, where the authorities recently arrested more than 50 members of the local ‘self-defence’ group on charges of belonging to, or working in concert with the CJNG, the members of the community managed to keep the LCT out.
Prados saw a billboard at the entrance to the town which said, “Welcome to the town of Buenavista, free of cuotas and Caballeros Templarios.” The Buenavista Tomatlán ‘self-defence’ group had at one point briefly ‘arrested’ members of the local police force, accusing them of colluding with the LCT.
The same accusation of connection with the CJNG has been made against the ‘self-defence’ group at La Ruana. They denied this to Prados, but he did see them armed with new AK-47s and at least one Ruger Mini-14 carbine (bought, according to the bearer, for more than US$2,600), which suggested that, just as their peers in Buenavista Tomatlán, they have had access to well-stocked suppliers.
The LCT has publicly offered the leader of the La Ruana ‘self-defence’ group a ‘pact for peace and civility’ — or, alternately, ‘a duel to the death’.
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