By: José Gil Olmos | Translated by Valor for Borderland Beat
Another ingredient has been
added to the chaos occurring in Michoacán: a group emerging in the troubled
Tierra Caliente region. But according to
its members, it isn’t a cartel or an autodefensa group…nor does it even have
high-powered weapons. It is called IRIS
and, as its spokesman says, its goal is to unmask-pacifically-corrupt
politicians, beginning with Silvano Aureoles and Alfredo Castillo. Mexico needs a spark that detonates change,
he says, and “we want to be that spark.”
With only two videos that are less than a minute
long, shared on social networks in February, the Insurgency Group for the
Institutional and Social Rescue (IRIS) put Michoacán Governor Silvano Aureoles
on alert, who also disqualified them saying that they are a “joke”.
In an interview with Proceso, José María, spokesman and representative of this armed
group, argues that the governor made a deal with drug traffickers and announced
a declaration of war against all politicians who are linked to organized crime.
The meeting with a dozen members of IRIS took
place in the mountainous area of Michoacán that borders with the state of
Guerrero. Along the way, squalid shacks
are seen inhabited by the people who barely survive from the planting of corn
and avocado, and the possession of some cows and chickens.
“Our area is Tierra Caliente, that is where we met
for eight months to make the decision to rebel.
We know that the government is already investigating us and we are in
the midst of criminals, but we couldn’t sit with our arms crossed,” José María
explains, moments before starting the interview.
Flanked by Pável, another member of this group,
the spokesman of IRIS rejects the descriptions used by the government of Silvano
Aureoles and even from members of the Catholic Church, in response to messages
on social networks with which the group unveiled on February 6 and 22.
He claims that it’s an insurgent social movement
that does not rule out the use of weapons, but only to defend themselves. He announces that its strategy will be more
political and of denouncing-directly or through social networks- mainly with
politicians who are in collusion with organized crime such as Alfredo Castillo,
who is accused of having made a pact with Los Caballeros Templarios, the Cártel
Jalisco Nueva Generación, Los Viagras, and the H3.
