Guerrero Vigilantes
Over the past four years towns across Guerrero, Mexico have formed vigilante police groups, known as auto-defensas, in an effort to challenge the army abuse, drug cartel violence and government corruption that has plagued Mexico for nearly a decade. This movement was composed mainly of men until September 2013, when the country's first ever all-female vigilante police was founded in Xaltianguis, Guerrero. Xaltianguis is a small town located in between the notoriously dangerous city of Acapulco and mountain ranges where illegal marijuana and poppies are cultivated. Residents of the town endured an especially high level of drug war related violence for years. Yet since the town's women started taking the law into their own hands, crime has dropped substantially. Roughly one hundred women make up the force. They are mostly middle-aged housewives, mothers and grandmothers who have lost loved ones to violence, or were once victims of crime themselves.
