Senator Luisa Maria Calderon Hinojosa, from the right-wing National Action party, said that the federal government legitimized the self-defense groups in Michoacan and now even the members of the drug cartels are trying to pass as them, leaving the population unable to sort out the good from the bad.

Calderon, known as “Cocoa”, said that the Federal Police used the self-defense groups as “hounds” to find the heads of organized crime, but now that they are not needed they are being “delegitimized”.

Cocoa added that groups like the Templar Knights are making themselves pass as members of the self-defense, and the original members of those groups are being left alone by the authorities, no longer their allies.

"People do not know who to trust, because they say that those who were Templars in their town now are the self-defense. They don’t know who’s good or bad”, she pointed out.

In that sense, the senator from Michoacan said that the problem of insecurity and violence is not something exclusive of the 25 municipalities in the mountain area of Tierra Caliente, but it is present on all the 113 townships in the state, and said that the authorities must design a security system for the whole region.