MEXICO CITY — Mexico essentially legalized the country’s growing ‘‘self-defense’’ groups Monday, while also announcing that security forces had captured one of the four leaders of the Knights Templar drug cartel, which the vigilante groups have been fighting for the last year.
The government said it had reached an agreement with vigilante leaders to incorporate their armed civilian groups into old and largely forgotten quasimilitary units called the Rural Defense Corps.
Vigilante groups estimate their numbers at 20,000 men.
The twin announcements may help the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto find a way out of an embarrassing situation in the western state of Michoacan, where vigilantes began rising up last February against the Knights Templar reign of terror and extortion after police and troops failed to stop the abuses.
“The self-defense forces will become institutionalized, when they are integrated into the Rural Defense Corps,” the Interior Department said in a statement.
Police and soldiers already largely tolerate, and in some cases even work with, the vigilantes, many of whom are armed with assault rifles that civilians are not allowed to carry.
Vigilante leaders will have to submit a list of their members to the Defense Department, and the army will apparently oversee the groups, which the government said “will be temporary.”
They will be allowed to keep their weapons as long as they register them with the army.
The military will give the groups “all the means necessary for communications, operations, and movement,” according to the agreement.
The vigilante leaders, who include farmers, ranchers, and some professionals, gathered Monday to discuss the agreement, but it was not yet clear for them what it would imply. It wasn’t known if the army would offer anyone salaries.
Misael Gonzalez, a leader of the self-defense force in the town of Coalcoman, said leaders had accepted the government proposal. But the nuts and bolts “are still not well defined,” he added. “We won’t start working on the mechanisms until tomorrow.”