A peso for a taco was too much
Juana Reyes and fellow citizens took up arms two years ago in Tepalcatepec
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It was a one-peso surcharge on the price of a taco that drove Juana Reyes to take up arms nearly two years ago in the town of Tepalcatepec.
After 12 years of oppression by the criminal gang Caballeros Templarios, Reyes had had enough.
She had decided to open a taquería in January 2013 when a man paid her a visit: the Caballeros would take one peso for each taco she sold.
“I felt a boundless rage,” recalled Reyes in an interview with Milenio.
At a subsequent meeting of taco vendors, she asked gang representatives how they would know how many tacos she had sold. The charge would be based on the amount of meat they purchased from the butchers, whose sales would be monitored, they explained.
In the end, Reyes paid not a single peso.
On February 24 of that year, with a megaphone in hand, she stood in the town’s central square and called on the citizens to take up arms and defend themselves. A civil defense movement was born and Reyes became it spokesperson and earned the name, La Comandanta.
By all accounts the first year was not an easy one. “It was a year of terror because every day we went out we were scared we wouldn’t return.”
For a dozen years the municipality of 15,000 in the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán had suffered under the yoke of the drug gang that operated with impunity, dealing in extortion and violence and death.
They charged levies and kidnapped, and stole vehicles, plots of land and houses. But now they’re gone, said Reyes, and economic growth has come instead: Tepalcatepec is in peace.
The same cannot be said for other communities in Tierra Caliente, such as La Ruana where two rival community police leaders had a shoot-out December 16 that left 11 dead. Reyes said the difference in her community is that they made their agreements with the federally-appointed security commissioner, Alfredo Castillo, and lived by them.
They put down their arms as civil defense militia and joined the officially-sanctioned Fuerza Rural. But in other towns there were those who did not want a pact with the government and had their own interests to serve.
Sooner or later, says Reyes, that will change and all of Tierra Caliente will be at peace.
Today, Juana Reyes is no longer the militia leader nor is she a member of the new community police force. And the taco stand never did get off the ground.
An agricultural engineer by training, she has embarked upon a project that was a dream for several years, but only a dream as long as the Caballeros Templarios were around.
By March her artisanal cheese-making cooperative, Tepemich, will employ its 12 members along with five other local residents.
And not a single peso will go to the Caballeros Templarios.
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