Posted on 10/28/2009 11:10:48 AM PDT by FromLori
MEXICO CITY, Mexico — The five teenage boys slump against the wall of a dark house and eye the camcorder nervously. Suddenly, a fist enters the frame smacking one of the boys in the face. Then the barrel of an automatic rifle appears and the teenagers’ expressions turn to terror.
“Why are you here?” shouts a voice. “For robbing,” one of the boys mumbles.
“You see. You were little rats and now look at you,” replies the interrogator.
The torture video of the five alleged house burglars was posted on the internet last week. It is the latest sign of brutal vigilante justice spreading across Mexico.
As kidnappings, muggings and car jackings spiral out of control, and the authorities appear increasingly impotent, shadowy groups have been advocating justice by the sword.
In other recent cases, alleged kidnappers and car thieves have been abducted and murdered and had their corpses dumped in public places along with threatening notes. There are also rising cases of mobs lynching alleged thieves and leaving them beaten, naked and tied up. “The government is failing to provide security and people are turning to some brutal alternatives,” said Rossana Reguillo, who studies crime and violence at the Jesuit University of Guadalajara. “This is not something that has always been around in Mexico. It is a new phenomenon that has been growing since 2000.”
In the latest case, the five teenagers were abducted after they allegedly robbed a house in the town of Tepic in the Pacific state of Nayarit.
The boys — all students of a local high school — were taken to an abandoned building where they had their heads shaved and then were beaten by fists and rifle butts and threatened at gun point, as shown on the video. One of the torturers is heard on the film saying he is the man whose house was robbed. The teenagers were also forced to perform sexual acts — including kissing each other in front of the camera — as a humiliation. The gunmen are heard threatening to cut their hands off unless they comply.
After being held all night the students were dumped naked on the street and then attended at hospital for injuries including broken ribs.
The torture film was posted on YouTube under the title “Little Rats of Tepic.” YouTube’s monitors quickly removed it from the site, flagging it as unsuitable content.
Following an outcry over the film, police on Monday arrested four building workers for the torture. However, one of the boys said they had first been arrested by state police and it was the officers themselves who turned them to the vigilantes. The Nayarit police chief denies the charge, saying officers did not question the boys until after they had been tortured.
The incident sparked disgust and condemnation from many.
“Opening the door to justice by your own hand is an enormous step back to a state of barbarism and lack of culture,” said Huicot Rivas, the president of Nayarit’s Human Rights Commission. “In a democratic state, crime can never be used to combat crime.”
However, others cheered on the vigilantes for trying to clean up the streets.
“For me the men who made this video are heroes. I sincerely admire them,” wrote a reader on the website of Mexican newspaper El Universal. “In Mexico, we need death squads to hunt and exterminate rats and kidnappers without further expense to society and the without human rights people getting in the way.”
“I recognize that this is not the correct way to administer justice but I can’t deny that it makes me happy that this type of thing happens,” wrote another reader.
Such feelings reflect desperation among many in Mexico about the lack of security. Amid a drug war that has left thousands dead, rates of anti-social crimes such as kidnapping and carjacking have risen to become among the worst in the world. At the same time, conviction rates for these relatively minor crimes are as low as 5 percent.
Many readers of newspapers have also written in to commend shadowy vigilante groups that have publicly announced their appearance in crime-plagued communities.
One such group called the Popular Anti-Drugs Army materialized among farming towns in the southern state of Guerrero.
Displaying blankets with written messages on bridges and buildings, the group claimed to be made up of family men who had come together to force drug dealers off the street.
“We invite the people to join our struggle and defend our children who are the future of Mexico,” it said on one of the blankets.
The group has been linked to several killings, including the decapitation of an alleged drug dealer in December. Following stories of that slaying, readers hailed the efforts in some Mexican media outlets.
“My sincerest congratulations to these brave men with their courage and determination,” wrote a reader of Mexican newspaper Milenio. “God help them with their noble cause.”
Investigators suspect that organized-crime groups themselves could be behind many of the vigilantes. While the gangsters traffic drugs to the United States, some are against selling them in their own communities and are opposed to criminals such as muggers and kidnappers.
A similar situation emerged in Colombia in the 1990s, when paramilitary groups both trafficked drugs and enforced the law against petty crooks in the fiefdoms they controlled.
The investigator Reguillo says that while it may not get as bad as Colombia, the vigilantism does pose a real threat to the Mexican state. “When armed groups administer their own justice, this represents an alternate power,” she said. “This a major problem for democracy in Mexico.”
You say that like it's a bad thing. Going around the corrupt government to do the right thing is good and right.
Every time I've asked you refuse to respond. You live in the city right?
Let me get this straight, the thugs are more trustworthy because they're local thugs? Uh...ok.
You’re a city boy - you think of vigilanteism as the gang culture. Not here, it’s good and decent men protecting their families. Same way in Mexico and I STILL applaud them for protecting their families.
Presuming you're correct that it's good men acting in a totally criminal and unlawful manner in your locale, which I don't, how do you know that the same holds true in Mexico? Other than the notion that you want to believe, no scratch that, romanticize that these are good men in Mexico protecting their families, what proof can you offer that this is the case?
Want some real examples of vigilantism? Tennessee two years ago: Robert Bell and Gary Lamar set fire to a sex offenders house, an act that many FReepers would applaud no doubt. Problem was that their target escaped the blaze, but Melissa Chandler died a fiery death.
Pennsylvania, June of this year, Michael Zenquis was beaten by a group of baseball bat wielding vigilantes because a little girl had been raped by a man close to his description. The real rapist was caught two days later.
Vigilantes make good television where the bad guys always get theirs and innocents are spared. In the real world, not so much.
Two different levels of thought going on here, I fear.
The first is a personal level. The community dispensing justice that they desperately need to protect themselves. That is good... to a point. It’s good because it reinforces the idea of civilization. That there are rights and wrongs and those who prey on the weak and innocent should be punished and driven off. This personal level of view can quickly get out of hand though, and that takes us to...
the societal level. Looking at it from this level, you can see the symptom of vigilantism as the society rots away. Without a social contract of whose sense of justice will be bowed to, there is no justice but the mob’s whim.
There was vigilantism during our Revolution, as there was in the French Revolution. The leaders of the mob in our revolution, however, were able to keep control of the mob. The French leaders feed the mob more and more victims of it’s vigilante justice.
Because it's a meaningless distinction. I lived in Deep East Texas for over 10 years, several miles outside of a town of 882, and 100 miles from a city over 50,000. We drove 20 miles to get groceries in the metropolis of Jasper, which was under 10,000 then. However, my answer would have been the same then, as it is now. I didn't magically change the moment I set foot in Dallas.
I see where you’re coming from. Thanks for that understanding.
Yes, I STILL trust the guys in my area to protect the families here and I STILL put faith in Mexico’s men to protect their families.
I hope they’re not thugs. I hope they are men like we have here, good and decent. I think there are far more cases of men protecting their families than the odd case of the horrible examples you’ve given. At least, I hope and pray there are so many more cases.
That’s another example of why I think government and law enforcement should be local rather than federal. Only those of us who live here know who is good and bad.
For cities, God help you folks.
Describing vigilante episodes here in the States is not the same.
In the U.S. it would be a very rare occurance that a man could rape a woman in broad daylight in the street and then walk calmly to his brother’s house across the street and sit on the porch openly laughing at the woman and her brothers who came to take care of her. In the U.S., that man would be arrested. In Mexico, that man is clapped on his back by the Chief of Police... his brother.
How do you describe men who beat him to death two days later as thugs?
Yes, thugs are there, but at the beginning of any vigilante movement most of the participants are law abiding citizens who cannot get justice or protection any other way.
The men who burned the house and beat the wrong man had other ways to get justice. They could have worked with the police. They could have let the courts work. They didn’t.
It’s different in Mexico, there you either take on the role of dispensing justice or justice never arrives. They aren’t thugs, they are desperate.
No problem. I understand where you’re coming from, but I’ve thought it all the way through, and I see where vigilantism fails.
Not only can’t vigilantes be trusted, but consider this: Due process not only protects the innocent, but forces the possible defenders and supporters of criminals to confront the evidence themselves. Fictitious example: My friend Larry rapes and kills a child. If Larry goes to court, evidence is presented, the semen in her body matches Larry’s, first hand accounts place Larry at the scene, Larry’s apartment yields unsavory pornography eerily similar to the fate of the young child. Myself and Larry’s friends and family are forced to confront the evidence in spite of our preconceived perceptions of Lary and in all likelihood most of us will wish Larry a speedy trip to hell.
Now, if Larry isn’t given a trial but is instead beaten by an angry mob in his apartment by baseball bat wielding thugs who kill Larry and set fire to his apartment, what happens? Will Larry’s friends confront his guilt, or in such an environment do Larry’s friends instead seek vengeance on those who killed who they believe to be their innocent friend? Obviously, in this scenario, Larry’s friends are far more likely to hold on to their perceptions of Larry, believe in his innocence and desire retribution.
In short, you have tribalism, and as a form of government, it pretty much blows.
See 47.
What if Larry starts looking at your little girl next?
That's what I mean by saying it isn't the same here and there. Down there, Larry is all over the place. You don't need to be a thug to put him in the ground.
It’s different in Mexico, there you either take on the role of dispensing justice or justice never arrives. They aren’t thugs, they are desperate.
Ok, I see where we’re failing to connect. You’re both looking at this on a individual level, where you see that these individuals apparently had no other recourse.
I’m looking at it as a sign of societal decay that will only get worse. This vigilantism will not stop with worried fathers protecting their children. The lawlessness will just continue to expand to the point were every armed group will consider themselves a law unto themselves, a tribe.
How about some examples of the "usual" tragedy.
If the "authorities" cannot....or will not, protect the citizens(which is their main job BTW)......who do you propose to do the job?...
By their nature, vigilantes rarely take much care to truly ascertain the guilt of their victims, and act on mere accusation alone.
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True. And, while I only skimmed the piece, I didn’t see that they are going after the big problem, the drug gangs.
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