Guages de Ayala, Mexico — With an AK-47 slung over his shoulder and a grenade strapped to his leather belt, Jesús Dominguez moves through thick brush in a rugged mountain area.
He marches with a group of camouflaged men patrolling the countryside Mexico Against one of the most powerful drug cartels in the country.
Equipped with military-grade weapons smuggled from the U.S., the 50-member force is one of dozens of “autodefensa” or “self-defense” groups that have emerged in Mexico over the past decade to fight increasingly sophisticated cartels in areas beyond the reach of security forces.
“The government doesn’t care about us, and it’s impossible for us to compete with (the cartels) for weapons,” Dominguez, 34, said from a monitoring post overlooking the mountains of Guerrero state. “They come at you with a lot of force, so you need to respond with force… If you don’t, they will overpower you.”
The vigilantes in Guajas de Ayala join a volatile landscape of warring armed groups – from tentacled cartels across Latin America to local mafias – in areas like Guerrero that have been ravaged for decades by divided cartels. it’s a confusion Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum have to settle under Trump administration pressure And there is a possibility of more violence after this Mexico’s most powerful drug lord murdered.
The vigilante group was formed in 2020 when the cartel La Nueva Familia Michoacana The cartel tried to take control of seven communities buried deep in the mountains along a strategic route linking the port city of Acapulco, where drugs and other illegal goods flow.
Residents said the cartel, named a foreign terrorist organization Last year the Trump administration began illegally occupying their lands and trying to force residents to join the fight against rival gangs.
In the absence of Mexican military and police forces, locals armed themselves. Sporadic firing continued for almost a year. Residents fled on foot, walking for hours into remote mountains with only the clothes on their backs. The community of 1,600 people dwindled to just 400.
After a pause in the fighting, Nueva Familia Michoacana again began infiltrating its territory in October, said the group’s leader, Javier Hernandez, setting up fentanyl labs and monitoring them with drones.
Now, people defend their cities from mountain observation posts and use their own drones to monitor up to 100 cartel gunmen camped a few miles (kilometers) away.
“We don’t want to be part of their ranks and we don’t want to give up our land,” Hernandez said. “We don’t want to be slaves to a cartel.”
The conflict runs deeper in Guerrero than in most Mexican states, with a history of insurgency dating back to the guerrilla movements of the 1960s. The landscape has become increasingly complex as cartels have divided into rival factions, creating a very different situation than in the past when a cartel had unbroken control over an area. According to a 2025 DEA report, five cartels operate here. As such Various local gangs and vigilante groupsMany of which are affiliated with large cartels.
“You have a kaleidoscope of armed groups,” said Monica Serrano, a professor at Colegio de Mexico who has studied violence in Guerrero. “This is one of the most difficult challenges facing the country and is the root of violence.”
self defense forces take off in Michoacán and Guerrero Around 2013. Like the group in Guajas de Ayala, they were formed as a desperate attempt to avoid getting caught in the crossfire of warring cartels.
But in places where criminal groups are more present than law enforcement, almost every vigilante movement that has emerged in recent history has either been controlled by rival cartels or massacred. Mexico’s government is divided About whether he should talk to the vigilantes or treat them like criminals.
In some cases, the groups themselves became cartel paramilitaries, flush with money and terrorizing the communities they claimed to protect. In others, cartels armed local civilians to help fight rival gangs.
“They have you surrounded and you can’t do anything,” Dominguez said. “That’s how what was created – what started as autonomy – has become corrupt. People join criminal groups to survive.”
The Guajas de Ayala community said it is independent, but uses equipment far beyond the means of local farmers, including drone detection systems and tapped radio frequencies and thousands of dollars worth of DJI drones to spy on cartel gunmen.
They have AK-47s and AR-15s marked “Made in USA” and the names of gun manufacturers in Florida, South Carolina and even Poland. Because Mexico has strict gun control laws, most weapons in Mexico are smuggled from the US by cartels.
A gunman confirmed that the vigilantes buy guns from the cartel, but did not specify which group the guns were purchased from.
Another said he was once part of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, and was paid to join vigilante groups. Another wore a hat that read, “El Señor de los Gallos,” nicknamed Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, powerful CJNG leader Killed by Mexican forces in February.
Guajas de Ayala, two local criminal gangs fighting alongside the Nueva Familia Michoacana, allows transit to their areas without having to close their areas on all sides as in the past.
At the same time, Hernandez said he passes intelligence on rival cartels to law enforcement, and his group has turned down alliance offers from other vigilante groups known to prey on civilians.
The spread of armed groups across Mexico is a test for Sheinbaum as she seeks to unsettle the Trump administration Threat of US military intervention.
Under Sheinbaum, security forces have cracked down harder on criminal groups than his predecessors. murders There has been a sharp decline since he took office Government figures show that it is at its lowest level in a decade.
But Hernandez said, the situation for them is worse than before.
“This is a lie. They say the government is doing wonderful work, but it is nothing but propaganda,” he said.
The murder of Oseguera Cervantes, or “El Mencho”, was Big blow to Mexico’s most powerful criminal enterprise. But experts and some in communities like Guajas de Ayala worry it could spark more violence if other criminal groups violently seize power or rival factions of the CJNG battle for control.
A Marine captain in Guerrero, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns, said his forces were “preparing for the possible reorganization of these groups.” He said Mexican forces have not abandoned communities like Guajas de Ayala, and respond to calls for help from rural areas.
The villages of Guajas de Ayala have become ghost towns, where people have empty houses and are too afraid to return.
Dominguez’s mother, Marisela Mojica, sent away her six children and grandchildren after her daughter was kidnapped by people claiming to be Nueva Familia Michoacana.
“If they come to kill us all, I want one of us to still be alive,” she said.
Mojica said she has not seen her family in six years or met her two grandchildren, born after the family fled. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever do it.
Teachers, fearful of moving from one criminal group’s territory to another, stopped attending classes in October, leaving schools deserted. Government medical clinics have been closed.
Hernandez counts abandoned houses left in ruins as he and his gunmen set out to patrol the high peaks and valleys that surround them.
“These mountains are a place of peace,” he said. “You have no voice, and no one hears you.”
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