Who's Worse: Mexico's Drug Lords or Its Vigilantes?

Sunday's vigilante takeover of Nueva Italia, a town in the drug-war-ravaged state of Michoacan in west-central Mexico, says many things about the status of Latin America's second-most-populous country -- few of them good. The response suggests Mexico's government doesn't understand the risks, both social and economic, of letting the country descend into ungovernable lawlessness.

The day after the takeover by the so-called Self-Defense Forces of Michoacan, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong and other top officials made a show of signing a security accord with Michoacan's besieged governor, who had just asked the federal government to reestablish order in his troubled state. Soon after, the Reforma newspaper reported, the government sent at least 11 helicopters and 70 federal agents to Michoacan to help disarm the paramilitaries.