WROL in Mexico: What it’s like when people self-govern

José Santos at a checkpoint near the entrance to Tancítaro. Fed up with both the cartels and the government, the people of Tancítaro pushed out both. Credit Brett Gundlock for The New York Times

A very interesting article about how people are running their own cities and territories as the central government of Mexico fails to deal with the drug cartels and widespread corruption.

Losing Faith in the State, Some Mexican Towns Quietly Break Away

The article is well worth your time but what I take from it is how complex these situations can be. At the end of the day when the government leaves a void regarding safety people have to defend themselves any way they can. Even then, it is not the safe utopia many survivalists often envision in their fantasies:

Monterrey: ‘They Destroyed the Whole Thing’
If Tancítaro seceded with a gun, then the city of Monterrey, home to many top Mexican corporations, did it with a Rolodex and a handshake.
Rather than ejecting institutions, Monterrey’s business elite quietly took them over — all with the blessing of their friends and golf partners in public office.
But their once-remarkable progress is now collapsing. Crime is returning.
“I’m telling you, I have a long career in these matters, and the project I am more proud of than anything is this one in Monterrey,” said Jorge Tello, a security consultant and former head of the national intelligence agency.
“It’s very easy to lose it,” he warned, adding that it may already be too late.
Monterrey’s experiment began over a lunch. Mr. Tello was dining with the governor, who received a call from José Antonio Fernández, the head of Femsa, one of Mexico’s largest companies.
Femsa’s private security guards, while ferrying employees’ children to school, had been attacked by cartel gunmen, he said. Two had died repelling what was most likely a kidnapping attempt.

In many cases the already existing socio-political structures can be used at a local level, but self-governing rather than taking orders from an incompetent and corrupt central government.
It also helps if the region is economically self-sustainable.

FerFAL
Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre is the author of “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” and “Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying is not an Option”