[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

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.

[Melas]

See 47.

[ozarkgirl]

Thanks for that. I would not have been able to say it so succinctly.

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.