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Vigilantes vow to kill one criminal every 24 hours
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I doubt that's really going to be an issue.
Revolutionary groups tend to either be VERY hostile to drug activity or in on it themselves, nether of which really promotes a heavy drug cartel presence (as generally to these groups drugs are to be sold or smuggled to other people, not whoever they represent.)
Why?
Also you didn't answer my question.
Because the families will be targeted before the vigilantes themselves when the cartels retaliate.
More at 11.
You know it's fucked up when "Female homicides in Ciudad Juárez" gets its own wikipedia article.
Wrong families. Unless Mexican gangs operate by a wholly different set of procedures.
Oh, I misread it.
Cuz the vigilantes will only kill bad people. After all, they said so. And no one will be sad if bad people die.
edit: the only downside is if the vigilantes are easily threatened. then it's just a waste.
I would expect any retaliation to be organized from the top.
Anyway, one could argue that the situation has devolved to the point were there is no functional justice system. In which case this isn't even really vigilantism.
I was going to say shotguns and moltov cocktails but yeah a titanium pitchfork would work. Also, whatever happened to good old fashioned poisonings?
A) Does it have to be?
Why? This 'sacrosanct' gang organizing retaliations appears to be starting at the grass roots level.[/quote]
Then what, pray tell, is it?
The cartels are a lot more organized then that though.
War?
The beginnings of a new system of order at the simplest tribal level?
What motivation would the newly widowed family have to wait for the cartels to enact their justice rather than going on their own vigilante binge against the 'vigilante' group in the OP? And how would their murderous response not be just as acceptable?
That would make the cartels a government. I am pretty sure threatening to kill a person every 24 hours isn't exactly condoned by modern war laws or at least considered an acceptable thing.
That's unlikely to happen for many reasons.
Can you explain how death squads murdering people have anything to do with societies at "the simplest tribal level"?
List them.
Well I mean also it's less "how likely is it?" than it is "isn't this basically the ages-old moral justification cycle that begins blood feuds?"
It won't end violence, it'll just transmute it. Turning lead into 208-Pb.
I don't see any. Vigilantes of Justice members kills your brother because he's a drug dealer for some cartel. Why aren't you going to kill some of them? It's a basic blood feud/Hatfield-McCoy/Capulet-Montague bullshit that leads to more needless deaths rather than fewer.
Because if they are smart you have no idea who they are. Key word there, smart. With rival gangs you know who is important, you know who is unimportant. People fight for turf, street cred, and you know basically who the other team is.
With a vigilante group they have day jobs, they blend in, they do not want anyone to know who they are. They do not have to control territory, they are not trying to maintain a distribution network, they do not have to risk exposing themselves in all the ways criminals do.
If they are smart.
Before written laws and courts and all the fancy trappings of civilization justice was handled individually, by a village as a whole, or the leaders of a village. This is just a reversion to that.
1) The vast majority simply won't be inclined to take such action. It's not something one does at the drop of a hat.
2) They would lack the sort of broad societal support that this group seems to have.
3) The vigilantes are probably less well known and harder to identify then their targets.
Finally, it seems to me that most so-called "death squads" are actually state sponsored or have revolutionary agendas, which makes them not a very good comparison to this case.
And, for the record, the hunter-gatherer societies you seem to have in mind are quite a bit different than what are considered 'tribes', which implies an ethnic identity and a stable geographic area.
Also, it's ridiculous and a little condescending to imply that people who decide to take the law into their own hands have reverted to some sort of primitive, basic form of existence. These people are reacting to a deeply corrupt system which continually endangers them and their families. It's a lot different than !Kung bushmen killing a giraffe.
EDIT: For that matter, it's pretty condescending to imply that the 'basic' form of society involves people just going around killing each other with no regard to societal mores.
going and cutting off someone's hands in the middle of the night isn't going to send the kind of message a car bomb in the middle of the day would, and it isn't as inconspicuous as someone disappearing off the street to never be seen again would.
All in all I wouldn't say these vigilantes are the brightest bulbs in the box.
Since the gangs do worse to the civilian population (more than 1 murder/day), it's arguably a proportional response.
Also, the term "vigilante death squads" seems loaded. Where exactly do we draw the line to something like the 20 July Plot?
(Haven't seen the movie yet. Is it any good?)
I'm not sure I follow. Firstly, organized crime requires a large population to work within, more than a tribes worth. Most tribes run about 600-1200 people. Law can be handled individually because everybody knows everybody, and the situation is familiar. No such thing as an appeal, so justice is usually short and swift. Surprisingly fair though, leaders of small groups are leaders for a reason- they handle things pretty well.
I'd say its closer to simple anarchy; the people in power aren't doing their jobs, and so the people no longer respect or expect their authority figures to intervene. The enforcement of the law moves down to the people, and within those people moves to those with the willingness to act.
So right off you have radicals and whackjobs thrown into the mob because normal people, responsible people, don't like getting violently involved and have day jobs. They might come along later, if the new org proves useful, but the common-sense thing to do is to hold back and see if these guys are going to get themselves and their families slaughtered. Not going to be a lot of steady hands on board, not a lot of deep thinkers.
So we see actions like this one. Maybe a first step, maybe nothing at all. Definitely a sign of desperation though, poor bastards.
That's probably an accurate way of putting it.
So what do these people do? They've tried fighting the corruption legally and have been killed for their efforts. They've tried forming neighborhood watch groups and the leaders of those are killed and the other members threatened. They've pleaded for help from the federal government and the soldiers are now committing the crimes they were sent to stop. So what do they do?
Don't they have a long record of shooting their head honchos?
Woah woah, I gotta say that the whole revolutionaries is only bottom up is totally false. Yes there are some like the Russian Revolution of 1917 who go mostly from the bottom up but it is the exception... not the rule. Not necessarily the aristocracy but upper middle class and such. Some major examples of top up ranging from bourgeoisie taking action to the creole elites include the American Revolution, Spanish American independence movements and the French Revolution just to name a few. You are still going to have Marxist historians pushing for revisionist history on class boundaries but you are mostly going to get action taken from the elite of a society in some of the major non-communist revolutions.
Edit: Getting off topic but this incident isn't classified as a revolution until we see a bunch of other major mexican cities in joining a vigilante effort.
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I'm saying it isn't a revolution, which is the problem. It's directed at killing criminals and not changing the broken government. This is also what I meant by bottom up. The dudes who aren't in charge and are pissed would be much better served by figured out a way of changing the government (i.e. the guys on top) to one that was deeply committed to ending the crime wave than by killing random street thugs.
As this would mean putting in leaders willing to wage a nasty and bloody war against a well-funded criminal organization that's in effective control of much of the country and many of the police and military, they'd have to find new rulers who were really, really committed. As in, willing to have their families, friends and themselves murdered in the course of restoring order.
As Batman shows, vigilante wars against crime never end. Movements to change the government end when you've changed the government.