Mexico legalizes vigilantes fighting drug cartel

- Mexico’s government on Saturday began demobilizing a vigilante movement of assault-rifle-wielding ranchers and farmers that had succeeded in largely expelling the Knights Templar cartel from the western state of Michoacan when authorities couldn’t.

At a ceremony in the town of Tepalcatepec, where the movement began in February 2013, officials handed out new pistols, rifles and uniforms to 120 self-defence group members who were sworn into a new official rural police force.