Michoacán state, Western Mexico, has been terrorised by drugs cartels in recent years.
Fed up with kidnapping and extortion by the ruthless Knights Templar, vigilantes known
as "Autodefensas" have been cleaning the state of the cartel village by village.
If you have the power and the money you can do anything around here in Mexico.
I guess we're crazy. Nobody fights against cartels because you know you're going to die
and we're fighting the most violent one.
I don't know if that makes us more violent but we're winning.
My name is Antonio Gutierez Farrias and I'm from Los Reyes, Michoacán.
I'm an autodefensa. I'm here to clean out the Templarios. I'm here to get my revenge,
you could say, for what they did to me, for what they did to my family.
The Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar) cartel, they're supposed to be like mafia,
like drugs, but they were not moving any drugs. They were kidnapping, extorting, killing people.
Whatever it takes: innocent or not innocent, kids or not kids. Man, they were like monsters.
They were the bosses. They were the owners of Michoacán.
If they didn't like you, they could kill you at any time and no one would say anything
because everybody's bought.
And that's when everybody had enough.
We removed the police - the Municipales - because they were so completely.... they were corrupted.
And we took our own guns, made our barricades and refused to let them in.
There's a picture of me when I was little here in Mexico and, like, a couple of months
after this is when I went to the United States.
Since I can remember, I don't remember Mexico. I felt like I was American, I was pretty much
raised there since I was young.
I got a younger brother and I got a younger sister and they're out there. They were completely born there.
Me, I was trouble since I was 13. 13 when everything just boom - blew for me.
I went to so many different junior highs, high schools, elementaries. I went from school,
from school, from school. No school wanted me.
Because I was mad at the world - mad at my mum, mad at my dad, mad at everybody.
And I don't know, I was with a bunch of gang members - some were young, some were older
than we were, I just felt like we were family and it just started going up from there.
Years fighting, carrying knives, pistols. My name was recognised in the gang - what
I was doing - and just stuff got real intense, man.
And it was probably like seven in the morning when I heard this loud knocking on my front
door. Pow, pow, pow! And I go to the window and I open the window that was right next to the
door and I see a bunch of unmarked cars and people in black running up and I'm like: "What?"
I'm looking at easily if I get 45 with the L. 45 to life.
They brought all the evidence they had and against me they had nothing. At the end the
DA came up to us with a deal. He said: "You take a 211, you take an armed robbery and
a strike and you get deported for life and you get the fuck out."
I got deported straight out of prison. Wow! That was something different.
First time being alone in a place I'd never been in, rumours about cartels killing people,
doing this, doing that and I pretty much walk into a hell.
As soon as I got here I found out that the cartel had killed one of my uncles and I get
picked up by the Sicarios when I wasn't even doing anything, outside my house, eating pizza
and watching a movie.
After his return to Mexico, Antonio was kidnapped by the Knights Templar.
22 days they had me in cabin on this hill and I didn't know at the time where I was
or what was happening.
I don't even know who the people were that were torturing me. They had a hood over my
head the whole time and then I just came to this one day when this guy came up to me.
he stood me up and we started walking. We walked about... a good 15 minutes and we came
up to this hole where there was already three bodies in there.
The guy told me: "Get on your knees!" I backed up and when I backed up I seen him, he was
trying to unholster his gun. With my hands cuffed in the front I hit him in the head
and I took off running.
I was a good 25 metres from him when he started shooting because I remember feeling the trees.
Bits of trees hit my face as the bullets were hitting and I was just running and running.
I probably spent two or three weeks recovering in Guadalajara and the movement was already
happening but I had it in my own mind to come back and get revenge.
And that's when my uncle, who was in the United States and he decided to come back to fight.
He came back and he told me: "Look! Check this out, I'm in this movement and we're going
to clean them."
And I'm like: "I'm in it."
Now we're fighting.
We take care of each other. So, like, my homie Watcho, he won't leave me anywhere. They're
not going to run, they'll stay and fight with me.
I follow Michoacán all round to take care of him and he likes that, that's why he wants
me with him.
I met Antonio, my namesake, because I'm also called Antonio, he was introduced to me by
my brothers, my close and trusted fight partners, he was introduced to me as someone who could
be trusted. He doesn't drink or do any drugs, he is always conscoius.
He had stories about him coming from the United States, where grew up without his parents.
He grew up amongst gangs, fighting, maybe he had even served time in jail, but our fight
actually came to save him, and he sees what a noble cause this is.
A lot of people in Michoacán just want to live in peace like they don't care who controls
the drugs trade or what's going on as long as people don't get mixed up with these people.
I can stay here and try and bullshit you guys that: "Oh no! Drug dealers are bad and stuff.
Everybody uses drugs. There's people in the United States that can't find a place to buy
weed or can't find a place to buy some good coke and they're looking for it and if the
government would legalise it all this crime stuff would probably come to an end. But until
then, there's going to be drug dealers, there's going to be cartels, there's going to be everything
in between to sell the drugs.
So all these Americans, all these other people here criticising us... people like that don't
understand it because they have everything. They're born having stuff. I ain't got nothing.
Still have nothing. The only thing I have is my family.
They can say I'm violent. They can say I'm an animal. Whatever, it don't bother me.
When they find themselves in the same position that we're in now, they're not going to like
the feeling.
I'm surviving.
I've got to do what I have to do to survive and take care of my family and that means
doing what I have to.
It's not for the country, it's not for the President, it's not for no one.
It's for us and for our families.
A lot of us are still here and more people are trying to join in to fight with us.
We're cleaning. That's what we're here to do. That's the thing around here....
You're not sure about the future.
After successfully "liberating" much of the state, the Autodefensa movement quickly splintered into different armed factions.
Some members became the Fuerza Rural, a new local police force paid by the government.
Some are rumoured to have formed a new cartel.
Antonio "Lonely" Farrias left Michoacán with his young family and is now living in Tijuana.
Michoacán remains mired in violence and corruption.