Michoacan Doctor Leads Vigilantes in City's Fight Against Drug Gangs Tim Johnson - McClatchyDC
go to original November 23, 2013

Jose Manuel Mireles, a physician who leads the self-defense group in Mochoacan, secretly began forming Tepalcatepec's self-defense group, which emerged publicly on Feb. 24. (Bernardo de Niz/MCT)

TEPALCATEPEC, Mexico — Dr. Jose Manuel Mireles dons a white lab coat and attends to patients at a clinic during the day. But during off hours, he has a second calling: chief of a ragtag band of armed vigilantes who are trying to keep gangsters out of the small city of Tepalcatepec.

After living a decade in Modesto, Calif., Mireles, 55, returned to this corner of Mexico’s Michoacan state in 2007, bringing his family with him.

His return was not easy. Drug-trafficking gangsters marauded across the land, and his hometown had grown unrecognizably violent.

“We used to have seven or eight executions every week,” Mireles said, and nearly every business and ranch was paying extortion fees to the dominant drug-trafficking crime gang, known as the Knights Templar.

Read the rest at McClatchyDC

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!