COALCOMAN, Mexico — From a desk overlooking the shady plaza of his backwater mountain town, Mayor Rafael Garcia recounts how he and other citizens finally mustered the nerve to take on the gangsters tormenting them.

“The problem started when they began messing with the population: extortion, rapes, killings,” Garcia, 42, says of the Knights Templar, the fancifully named cartel of thugs who control many of western Michoacan state’s 113 counties. “We were terrified. We are still terrified.”

Following the lead of two nearby counties, Coalcoman’s people two weeks ago armed a makeshift militia with assault rifles and shotguns and drove the Templars out.

The gangsters responded by besieging the town from its outskirts. They set fire to trucks and cars trying to leave and attacked men working the forests and ranches.

Wielding a quasi-religious code of conduct and a cynical vow to defend communities against outsiders, the Templars are Michoacan’s latest incarnation of a deeply rooted and politically protected criminal culture.

The state has produced export-grade opium and marijuana for more than a century, churned out methamphetamine in recent times, and served as a key smuggling route for South American cocaine.

But this latest threat of impending slaughter proved a watershed, forcing President Enrique Peña Nieto to backtrack on vows to demilitarize Mexico’s fight against its heavily armed and murder-minded gangsters.

He named an army general on May 16 to take control of Michoacan’s public security and deployed as many as 6,000 soldiers to the state with orders to disarm the militias and force the Templars to retreat.

“I still don’t understand how the government let this go on so long,” Garcia says. “They didn’t imagine the town would take up arms. The army is here because the people rose up.”

Coalcoman joins a spreading movement across violence-plagued Michoacan and neighboring Guerrero state, where towns and villages have formed volunteer “community police” to depose corrupt local police and draw a line in the dirt against the gangs.

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