Mora was one of the driving forces behind armed civilian groups that confronted drug traffickers in Michoacan
Editorial staff
BBC News World
“I don’t have much time left here… I won’t make it to Christmas alive.”
The words were uttered just a few weeks ago by Hipolito Mora, the controversial Mexican landowner who a decade ago promoted the creation of civilian self-defense groups to confront the drug traffickers who control the western part of the country.
His prediction came true on Thursday, June 29, when he was ambushed by several armed men while driving in his armored van.
Although authorities have only just begun investigations, local media have attributed the murder of Mora and three of his bodyguards to a criminal gang called Los Viagras.
The events occurred in the town of La Ruana, a small town in the Michoacan municipality of Buenaventura, where the landowner was born 68 years ago and where he lived most of his life.
Ten years ago in several states, civilians armed themselves to confront criminal groups in the face of state inaction.
A “madman” fed up with extortion
In 2013 Mora, along with other agricultural producers and local businessmen, created armed groups, which confronted the cartel known as the Knights Templar.
The criminal group gradually took control of what was known as “Tierra Caliente” by imposing curfews and extorting farmers and day laborers and forcing many of them to leave the area under threat of death.
At that time, Mexico was experiencing the aftermath of the “war on drugs” launched by President Felipe Calderon (2006-2012), which led to an increase in violence in the country.
“I’m not very well mentally,” he admitted in an interview with Televisa, in which he attributed his decision to take justice into his own hands to the inaction of the authorities and the weariness of seeing his neighbors suffer from the actions of criminals.
“I was angry at the criminals, because I saw how they abused the nobility of the people. People did not want problems, they wanted to work at ease,” he said, and attributed to this the enthusiasm that his initiative initially received.
“I was followed by the poor people. None of the rich people came to the movement, they stayed in their homes,” he said.
However, the disappeared rancher later admitted that he himself was affected by the action of criminals, because in 2013 criminals prevented one of his sons from harvesting on his land; and, therefore, he communicated with other leaders in the area to launch his resistance against the drug traffickers.
A year later, his son was killed in an armed confrontation with drug traffickers.
The vigilantes were accused of committing crimes in their fight against crime.
Hero or villain
Although Mora presented himself as a champion against crime, he had his own problems with the law. The newspaper Reforma revealed that the founder of the self-defense groups was in jail twice in the United States for drug possession and trafficking.
The first was in June 1989, when he was sentenced to four years in prison. Subsequently, in 1993 he was captured again in U.S. territory for the same crime and two years later he was deported to Mexico.
Mora’s anti-crime crusade quickly landed him in trouble. In 2014 he was arrested for allegedly participating in the murder of two members of another armed civilian group and was later accused of being linked to the deaths of ten people. However, he ended up being released months later.
“The illegal armed vigilante movement (…) did not bring anything positive to the state,” said Michoacan Governor Alfredo Ramirez Bedolla, reacting to the landowner’s death.
In recent years Mora admitted that his creation did not operate as expected, although he did not assume any responsibility.
“It was my turn to see the process of the self-defense groups, I am the real founder here in Tierra Caliente, later more self-defense leaders emerged, but some leaders let the self-defense groups fill up with pure criminals and put on the self-defense shirt, that’s why it was lost,” he declared in 2020.
However, until the end of his days he defended the need to fight criminal groups in every way possible.
“I think we need some Bukeles here in Mexico. Whoever bothers, we need someone to bring order. We are sick to death of working for other people,” he told El Heraldo just a few days ago.
Mora ran for federal deputy and governor of Michoacán, without much success.
Frustrated career
Mora tried to take his ideas to the institutions, although without much success.
In 2015 he accepted the nomination of Movimiento Ciudadano to run for the position of federal deputy for District XII, corresponding to Apatzingán. Then, dressed in a cowboy hat and bulletproof vest, the lemon grower campaigned, but did not make it to Congress.
And in 2020 he ran for the position of governor of Michoacán.
“I want to be governor (…) to help citizens and not to loot the state. I want to be an example in politics, that those who have been and those who are in government learn how and for whom one should work”, he said after registering his candidacy.
However, on that occasion the ballot did not favor him either.
In the last year Mora had suffered two attacks, but he had escaped unharmed from both of them. The same luck did not accompany him on June 29.
