"The Drop That Makes the Glass Overflow"

TEPALCATEPEC, Mexico — What they call "the drop that makes the glass overflow" for the people living in fear of the brutal Knights Templar drug cartel in the western Valley of Apatzingan, comes at different times for different people:

• For lime grower Hipolito Mora, it was time to organize and pick up arms when a packing company controlled by a brutal drug cartel refused to buy his fruit. 
• For Bishop Miguel Patino Velazquez, it was seeing civilians forced to fight back with their own guns that made him speak out. 
• For Leticia, a lime picker too afraid of retribution to give her last name, it was the day she saw a taxi driver kidnapped in front of his two young children that convinced her to join those taking the law into their own hands. 

"We lived in bondage, threatened by organized crime. They wanted to treat people like animals."

Leticia, 40

Eight months after locals formed self-defense groups, they say they are free of the cartel in several municipalities of the Tierra Caliente ("Hot Land") whose name has also come to signify criminal activity. Self-defense group leaders, clearly breaking Mexican law by picking up military-style arms to fight criminals, say the federal government is no longer arresting them, but recruiting them to help federal forces identify cartel members.

SEE: Aiken Standard