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In Mexico, Vigilantism Rises on Surge of Crime, Public Disgust

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Times Staff Writer

Maria del Refugio Perez is a 60-year-old street vendor who says she abhors violence. But this month, she joined a raging mob that corralled, pummeled and hog-tied a suspected thief and almost burned her alive.

Drawn by a butcher’s shouts that she had caught the woman grabbing money from a cash drawer at her shop, Perez and other neighbors quickly seized her. Once the church bells in this Mexico City suburb started ringing, signaling a town emergency, the mob grew in size -- and anger.

“These things happen because the authorities don’t do anything,” Perez said, recalling days later how the woman, Juana Moncayo, was tied to a flagpole in the town plaza for several hours as the crowd of 200 insulted and beat her. “Some were yelling, ‘Burn her! Burn her!’ ” when the police finally came to take her away, Perez said.

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“I don’t like that people act that way, but so what, if it is the only way that delinquents know what they are risking,” Perez said.

She and others here said they were fed up with a recent plague of break-ins, assaults and vandalism, and decided to take justice into their own hands -- just like other communities across Mexico have in recent weeks.

“People are very united here. Since the police don’t do anything, it’s up to us to show the criminals, and others thinking of doing the same thing, what happens when they are caught,” said Jose Vargas, a clothing vendor in the town plaza.

Although statistics on mob justice aren’t kept, experts agree that vigilantism is rising across Mexico in step with public disgust over violent crimes and the government’s inability to stop them. It’s the same disgust that sent a quarter of a million marchers into Mexico City’s streets two months ago.

Since the march, politicians at all levels have promised to do something about the problem. President Vicente Fox unveiled a 10-point plan last week that includes $100 million in anti-crime funds by the end of the year -- in addition to the $250 million he had budgeted for security. Fox also has promised to increase the federal budget for security next year to $500 million.

Three days earlier, Fox accepted the resignation of the nation’s top federal law enforcement officer, Alejandro Gertz Manero, who said he was quitting because he was approaching retirement age.

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Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has also taken action, cracking down on panhandlers, street vendors, windshield washers and prostitutes and promising a 15% reduction in the crime rate over the next year.

Reliable crime statistics are hard to come by, but experts agree that violent crimes, especially kidnappings, have increased in Mexico in recent years. With abductions expected to rise past 3,000 this year, Mexico could replace Colombia as the country with the most cases, victim advocacy groups say.

“It will be difficult to improve things in the short term, but at least the government has made this a top priority, which is a change,” said Jorge Chabat, a professor at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching in Mexico City. “The added money will help. That is a real advance. [Fox] put his money where his mouth is.”

But people in towns such as Santa Rosa Xochiac remain deeply skeptical that crime will recede anytime soon. Distrust of the local police, seen as being in cahoots with criminals, runs deep.

Several townspeople here said the mob didn’t want to give Moncayo up to the police because they feared that she would bribe them and they would set her free.

“We knew once she left in the patrol car, they weren’t going to do anything because they never do with the corrupted ones,” said homemaker Consuelo Garcia, 44. “But at least in the end, the thieves know they can’t play with the people of Santa Rosa, that here they face consequences.”

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In the meantime, they vow they will continue to take the law into their hands, as have several communities recently:

* A crowd of 100 in the town of San Juan Chamula in Chiapas state threw their mayor and three members of his staff in jail for allegedly misappropriating funds.

* Enraged residents of San Pablo Oztotepec, a suburb of Mexico City, beat two suspected car thieves to unconsciousness. Only the intervention of an assistant city prosecutor saved them from being bludgeoned to death, authorities say.

* A crowd in the Cuajimalpa section of the capital severely beat a policeman after he lost control of his patrol car, killing one person. The officer was rescued, but not before the crowd burned his vehicle.

* Residents of a small town in Campeche state burned several vehicles belonging to a visiting circus after one of the employees was suspected of sexually molesting a 6-year-old girl.

* A man in Yucatan state was doused with gasoline and nearly set on fire after a crowd accused him of torching 15 houses.

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Some people also have taken police work into their own hands, frustrated by the authorities’ shortcomings in carrying out basic crime investigations. Guadalajara businessman Juan Manuel Estrada started the privately funded Stolen and Disappeared Children Foundation five years ago and has since recovered 47 minors, he said, including several abducted for sexual exploitation

“Yes, I am a kind of vigilante who takes justice in my own hands, but always within a framework of legality,” Estrada said, adding that his group concentrates on sexually exploited minors because police tend to shy away from such cases, believing that the victims somehow are responsible for their own abductions.

Estrada said his network has helped uncover an illegal adoption racket in Canada dealing in Mexican babies; exposed a child abuse ring in Puerto Vallarta; and dismantled a child pornography ring operating out of Guadalajara and Colima.

“Society is meeting a void the authorities aren’t filling,” Estrada said. “That’s why we are doing this.”

Security expert Ana Maria Salazar said vigilantism is a symptom of the increasing lack of faith Mexicans have in the authorities.

“This has happened in the past, but more so now. People don’t feel protected,” said Salazar, who is also a newspaper columnist. “There is a general perception that if you go out and commit a crime, nothing is going to happen. And that goes for the vigilantes as much as for the criminals. So there is no incentive not to go out after the criminals.”

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Maria Elena Morera, a dentist who also leads the citizens advocacy group Mexico United Against Crime, which helped organize the massive June march, said vigilantism works against any reduction in crime.

“What we demand is that the authorities do their job,” Morera said. “The citizens can’t do what they aren’t trained for.”

Morera’s group and others, including Coparmex, Mexico’s largest business owners association, have called on the government to use the added anti-crime funds to “professionalize” the nation’s police forces by offering better training and better salaries to make police less susceptible to corruption.

U.S. law enforcement officials and even top Mexican prosecutors routinely say that Mexican police on the local, state and federal levels are by and large contaminated by corruption, which stems from abysmally low salaries, poor-to-nonexistent benefits and weak powers.

“Who can expect a policeman who makes $300 a month, as most municipal police do, to do a good job?” Morera said.

Renato Sales, a deputy attorney general of Mexico City, said more money is only part of the solution. The country, he said, is in need of sweeping judicial and penal reforms to go after criminals.

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“We are aware that citizens have little faith in the state,” he said. “But to make significant changes, we need more resources and we need better laws.”

Some human rights officials said that vigilantism only makes a lawless society worse.

“This is nothing new in Mexico, this collective rejection of the law in search of something more overwhelming and immediate,” said Jose Luis Soberanes Fernandez, president of the National Human Rights Commission. “But it can’t hide what it represents -- an ignorance of legality and of civilized forms built over thousands of years of human history.”

But people are less philosophical in San Mateo Tlaltenango, another Mexico City suburb, where a mob recently set fire to a patrol car after a drunken policeman rammed into two taxis and then tried to drive away.

“The problem is the police here are corrupt, they never come to protect us, and when they do come they only cause problems,” shopkeeper Alberto Gonzalez said. “Community justice isn’t going to stop until we have good police and good leaders. Until then, the people are going to have to take their own measures.”

Vargas, the Santa Rosa Xochiac clothing vendor, agreed. “If someone does something bad here, the community will grab him,” he said. “We’ll defend ourselves because there is no one else to do it.”

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Times researcher Cecilia Sanchez in Santa Rosa Xochiac and special correspondent Sean Mattson in Guadalajara contributed to this report.

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