1.
The specific scene that got to me was
during the documentary, Cartel Land, was during the Autodefensa campaign
through Mexico’s Michoacán. The Autodefensa was a vigilante group of citizens
across all cities uniting to fight against the cartels terrorizing cities. In
their campaigns through the cities to tell all the locals what they were doing, one of the towns cities got very upset with
the leaders of Autodefensa during the campaign. The citizens were interrupting
the speech and yelling about how nobody asked for the Autodefensa’s help and
they were not needed. Not only this but the citizens were accusing the
Autodefensa group of raiding houses, aiming guns all over recklessly, and other
harsh accusations. This upset me because the citizens are arguing with a group
of people who are there to help them fight against the cartel. This is
ridiculous because the vigilante group of citizens, Autodefensa, are united by
heartbreak of family members getting killed or other awful things done by the cartel to them. Also, they are going into cities with people who they do not know and
helping them because they don’t want those some heart-breaking actions to
happen to their family members, random people.
The
reason this upset me is because the Autodefensa are only there to help. The
houses that they were raiding belong to the cartels. Not only this but the Autodefensa
were accused of using their guns recklessly and aiming everywhere. This is the
only criticism that is somewhat of a fair thing to say because a stray bullet
could hurt a citizen. However, the citizens should be glad that the
Autodefensa are there to help fight off cartels and not upset. The Autodefensa
are helping voluntarily and most are
men with families. Being angry with these men is completely absurd because they
are putting their lives on the line to protect citizens they do not know.
2.
The thing that most surprised me was how
the two main groups of vigilantes in the documentary were. The Autodefensa in Mexico fighting off
the cartel and vigilante border defenders in Arizona. Both grouped up
with others that had similar views to each other. Both groups were very determined
to what cause they were fighting against and went to great extents to do their vigilante "job". Another similar thing is that both
groups had strong opposition from citizens, calling the Autodefensa dangerous
and calling the Arizona border team racist.
However,
there were also many differences between the two groups that surprised me as
well. For one, the Autodefensa went town to town recruiting people in person, meanwhile the Arizona border team began to recruit people online. I felt like the
Autodefensa strategy was more effective because they could talk face to face
with the people to recruit meanwhile the border team had to leave limited
information up online that could be interpreted different than intended.
3.
A question I have after watching Cartel
Land would be, why didn’t more people agree with the main leader of the
Autodefensa, Dr. Mireles, that he wouldn’t join with the government instead of being a vigilante group?
He was the original founder of the group and had a natural talent to
lead, yet practically nobody joined with him in his rebel against the
government when the government wanted the Autodefensa so disarm and join the
government as a federal group. He thought the government was corrupt and wanted to keep the cartels safe. Dr. Mireles was arrested and held in solitary
confinement for standing up for his beliefs against the government.
Some
problematic concepts I saw in the film included how the camera crew was
available to get an interview with the drug makers for the cartels. I find that
strange that the cooks weren’t bothered by being filmed, although they had
masks. Also, they are willing to risk their location of their lab just for
being in the film. It is understandable that they have no choice to make drugs and
want to get their word out but why jeopardize being exposed and possibly arrested? Another
problematic concept I had was that the documentary did not tell much about the cartels and
if their activity was lowered since the Autodefensa joining the government. Not
only this but if I was wondering if any of the any cities
that were taken back from the cartels by the Autodefensa had problems with the cartels again.
That was only mentioned briefly and not too much in detail. One more problematic
concept was that the border team in Arizona did not have much story about
them after they got the new recruits. Other than 1 mission
where they found people trying to cross the border, there was not much story on them. I am curious if American
citizens still hated them and called them racists. Last problematic concept I
had was if anybody was outraged that Dr. Mireles was jailed. After all he was
the original leader of the Autodefensa.
