Photo: Enrique Castro/AFP/Getty Images
By: The opinion Posted Jul 14, 2023, 14:56 pm EDT
For years it has been said that resistance is in the blood of the indigenous people and that is something very true, because for centuries they have survived adverse situations and resisted in all possible ways. First he went to conquer, then to marginalization and poverty; now to the last two factors is added that of organized crime that devastates them. But a people demonstrated why that is said about them, since faced a criminal group for 60 hours.
This is Chilapa, Guerrero, where the few remaining inhabitants of the Tula community saw that members of “Los Ardillos” were approaching, because the dogs began to bark, according to the newspaper Milenio in a special report on the event.
They listened to the distant hum of the engines like rattlesnakes, and then more nervous than determined, they began to whistle and ring the bells to notify the Emiliano Zapata Guerrero Indigenous and Popular Council that the armed battle for which they had prepared was about to begin.
They already knew what was coming, it is not the first time that something like this happened, for some reason the community was left empty, even so they got ready for the confrontation, which would be unequal in everything. On one side were members of the Nahuatl, Tlapaneco and Mixtec indigenous peoples without military training; of the other, hitmen trained by paramilitaries from southern Mexico.
On one side, 22 caliber shotguns with little ammunition; in the other, AK-47, AR-15 rifles and two artillery drones. At one extreme, the forgotten of Guerrero who survive with self-cultivation; in the other, a criminal group that presumes to have the support of mayors and police chiefs from Chilpancingo to the poppy mountain.
Still they rushed into combat, They took their old weapons, said goodbye to their families and asked them not to wait for them.They did not know if they were going to return, but for their loved ones they did. With fear and precarious weapons, they went out to meet the criminals, who they describe as “bloodthirsty.” Three nights and two days the battle lasted. In those 60 hours no authority came to defend them.
According to Milenio, the brief episodes of calm served to relieve tired men, eat a taco with beans or drink water always with their finger on the trigger.
Although this confrontation occurred a couple of years ago, it has been recently remembered due to the great power that Los Ardillos have accumulated in the state of Guerrero, who between July 9 and 11 mobilized their people and the population to block a federal highway and they detained 13 public servants, in retaliation for the capture of two of their alleged leaders.
As if that were not enough, a video recently surfaced in which the leader of the criminal group met with the mayoress of Chilpancingo, Norma Otilia Hernández.
The Ardillos against the Indians
Los Ardillos have a lurid peculiarity among criminal groups in Mexico: almost all of their victims are of indigenous origin, whom they ambush on religious festivities —such as the 2019 attack on the patron saint festivities of Santo Niño de Atocha in Chilapa— or celebrations communal to maximize damage.
The list of murders includes, for example, 12 musicians shot after a popular festival and the two teenagers who were returning from a fair in Ahuexotitlán.
According to the newspaper El Universal, Los Ardillos is a family group that has been operating in Guerrero for more than three decades. The founder was Celso Ortega Rosasnicknamed La Ardilla, assassinated on January 26, 2011, after which control of the group fell to his sons.
Keep reading:
– Mayor of Chilpancingo is captured with the leader of Los Ardillos: “It was a fortuitous breakfast,” she says
– Around 500 residents of Guerrero armed themselves to confront the La Familia Michoacana cartel.