It gets dark in Aguililla and some children play with their roosters in the street, prodding them, getting excited at each peck, challenging under the hot sun of the Michoacan mountains.
They come and go, they change animals, they stretch their crests.
They laugh: they are 12 years old.
Then they bring their chirriones, some string and stick whips from which they make firecracker noises.
One of them exclaims, "Look, the submachine gun!", And hits the furious whip, three, four, five times, click, click, click.
And then another, like this, out of nowhere, blurts out: "Did you hear the shooting before?"
Violence creeps into the conversations of Aguililla's neighbors, regardless of age. Perhaps the older ones surround the subject with a little more modesty, but the children speak of the dead, of blood, of neighbors who are fleeing, just as they speak of bicycles or football matches. It is not very clear if what happened a while ago was gunshots or another group of children playing chirrión, or just an echo, any noise bouncing off the walls of the houses and that here, in Aguililla, it suddenly becomes a threat.
Because whatever the noise was, the threat exists and dominates the life of the people. For a few months now, the conversations here have revolved around the shootings. “Long ago it was the same story. Those of us who have stayed are dealing with a problem that looks like an escalation ”, explains Gilberto Vergara, a local priest. "Why? Sometimes it is a question of territory, to expand ”, he adds. A bridge between the mountains and the coast, Aguililla, with 15,000 inhabitants, is a
cul de sac
. Minutes from downtown is the mountains, the perfect hideout for the mafias. And on the other side of the mountains appears the coast and the great port of Lázaro Cárdenas, a
first-rate industrial
hub
. There are no roads between the town and the coast, only gaps.
A group of the Michoacán state police patrols the highway of the El Aguaje community.Monica Gonzalez / El País
Mafias fight these breaches and their communities to the death.
Every few days there comes the rumor of another besieged ranch, neighbors who leave their houses because a criminal group occupies them and turns them into trenches.
The neighboring town of Apatzingán has received hundreds of Aguililla residents in recent months, who arrive with what they are wearing.
The breakdown of the self-defense groups in the state and the government's lukewarm response to the push from the mafias leave the neighbors defenseless.
Added to the direct violence of recent times is the problem of the road. Because there is no routine that coexists with the isolation that crime has imposed on Aguililla. At the end of last year, one or more of the armed actors in conflict in the region dug ditches in the road that connects the municipality with Apatzingán, a large town in the area, its umbilical cord with the world. The residents were forced to make great detours through the mountains, a step also controlled by the armed groups, who have installed checkpoints in the gaps, turning the sierra-coast region of Michoacán into an absurdity.
The adjective is not gratuitous: not even the neighbors are clear about which group is which and what interests they defend, not to mention ideas. They only know that there are checkpoints, ditches, that the main road can hardly ever be used. In recent days, the Michoacán police have brought machinery to the road to cover the ditches. This Friday, Aguililla awaited the arrival of the apostolic nuncio, Franco Coppola, representative of the Vatican in Mexico. Dozens of agents guard the 79 kilometers of road to Apatzingán. In Aguililla they wonder how long it will take them to leave after the departure of the nuncio on Friday.
For many neighbors, the dilemma is not to leave or stay, but when to leave.
The barber Javier —fictitious name— says he wants to leave as soon as possible.
You have applied for a work visa in the United States.
Another option is to go to Morelia, the capital of Michoacán.
Javier has a six-month-old baby and since November he cannot go to the pediatrician: in Aguililla there is none, the road has not been an option and taking risks in the mountains did not appeal to him either.
The highway that connects Apatzingán and Aguililla, remained blocked by the different criminal groups.
As you pass you can see the traces of the confrontations.
Monica Gonzalez / The Country
"Just look," he says, as he takes his cell phone out of his pocket, opens his video gallery and puts one on.
"Do you see them?" He asks.
In the images the hermitage of the Virgen del Rayo appears, recorded from the patio of her house, about 200 meters away.
Next to the hermitage, three men with long weapons shoot.
"That is not pretty," he says.
Tomatoes and escapes
When they talk about criminal groups, Aguililla's neighbors say “those from there” and “those from here”.
Those from there are the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG), a group led by Nemesio Oseguera, alias
El Mencho
, one of the alleged drug traffickers most wanted by the governments of Mexico and the United States, media heir to El Chapo Guzmán and the Sinaloa cartel .
Those from here are the remains of self-defense groups, supported by impersonations of mafia networks in the region.
Arisen during the first years of the Government of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), the self-defense groups of Michoacán experienced an important boom until 2015. Tired of the extortion of mafias such as the Knights Templar or the Michoacan Family, annoyed with the neglect of the Government, residents of several towns such as Apatzingán, Tepalcatepec or Buenavista Tomatlán took up arms and became vigilante corporations.
Also in Aguililla they organized.
It happened, however, that that idea was shipwrecked.
The mafias infiltrated the self-defense groups and later the groups broke up and atomized.
The violence continues and the population has less and less space to move.
A chapel at the entrance of the Aguililla community.
Monica Gonzalez / The Country
Manuel, also not his real name, a 49-year-old systems engineer, was born and raised here. He knows the names of all those who were once part of the marihuaneras mafias of the 20th century, of the caciques who organized the self-defense groups a little less than 10 years ago. Of the ties of these caciques with the Knights Templar, of the evolution of those criminal networks, of the appearance of the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel. "Well, in the end they are all from here," he explains, while giving names and more names, bandits from Aguililla and its surroundings. "The same Mencho is from here," he points out, "from Naranja de Chila, a [community] estate of Aguililla."
In the absence of students, Manuel grows tomatoes on a small family plot.
She prefers not to say her size to avoid being identified.
The season begins in August, with the rains.
In December they harvest.
“Last year, when we were going to start harvesting, they cut up the road.
There we all lost money ”, he says.
Until the road was closed, the Aguililla farmers took their merchandise to Apatzingán.
They only had to pay the groups 5,000 pesos - about 220 euros - for a “tomato car”.
Without liking it, the quota did not prevent them from living.
For them, the road is life.
Manuel plans to wait for the next school year, for the next growing season.
What happens then could define their future and that of hundreds of residents of a besieged population.
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