Bat-Wielding Guatemalan Grannies Protect Residents from Gangs

[Judi Lynn]

Published 9 February 2017


Grandmothers and homemakers in a Guatemala City suburb are leading neighborhood watch patrols to protect residents from local street gangs.

Lawn signs, flashlights, matching T-shirts. These are some of the items you’re probably used to seeing your local neighborhood watch group carry with them on their patrols. But for residents of Guatemala’s Ciudad Peronia, grannies with bats, machetes, and black ski masks are commonplace.

Grandmothers and homemakers in the Guatemala City suburb are leading neighborhood watch patrols to protect residents from local street gangs. Members of the patrols, armed with low-cost defensive weapons, began organizing last month after 10 of their neighbors were murdered for refusing to pay extortion money to the gangs, the Sun reported.

Local branches of the transnational MS-13 and Barrio 18 street gangs force locals to pay protection money and brutally punish them if they don’t, according to the Sun.

More:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Bat-Wielding-Guatemalan-Grannies-Protect-Residents-from-Gangs-20170209-0045.html