In her cell were piles of books from supporters: a biography of the indigenous guerrilla Lucio Cabañas (“My idol”), a history of Catholic nuns, a book on the Zapatistas, Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist.” But she found it hard to concentrate on reading. “Your mind is always thinking about why they think you’re a criminal, why they put you inside,” she said. It all felt like a plot to drive her insane. She wrote in a journal, and tried to avoid the news.

“We’re never going to resolve this if you won’t get your own sword.” Facebook

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Three days later, she learned that the court had found her innocent: again, the victims named in the arrest orders hadn’t showed up. Salgado walked out of the prison in an olive-green polo shirt with the CRAC-P.C. logo and a matching baseball cap. Outside, amid a throng of supporters, community policemen from around Guerrero had assembled in two rows extending to the street. In bright sunshine, the men saluted. “They all recognized me as their commander,” she said. “It was beautiful.” One of them brought out handcuffs, which she put on and then dramatically pulled apart, as the crowd cheered. “I am free, thanks to the townspeople,” she told them. “Thank you for your struggle. Thank you for believing in me.”

Salgado heard little news from Olinalá in prison, but she knew that the movement she had helped to revive was troubled. Across Mexico, vigilante militias, called autodefensas, had formed, and were operating outside the law. Some were opportunists, taking advantage of the chaos to carry out illegal activities; some had been infiltrated by the cartels, which used them to expand operational bases and to attack rivals. “Once the vigilante groups established control, they began to criminalize themselves,” Steven Dudley, a co-director of Insight Crime, which investigates organized crime in the Americas, said. “People started to realize many of them weren’t what they were saying they were.” As violence increased throughout the region, popular support waned. The government saw an opportunity for political advantage. It began working to disarm some of the autodefensas, while integrating others into a “rural defense corps” and hailing their work as an example of effective local justice.

Around Olinalá, some of the corrupt autodefensas falsely claimed to work with CRAC-P.C.—a dangerous situation, because the community police could be caught between the government and the cartels. “We’ve had threats in our own homes, phone calls, and we’ve heard comments on the streets,” Calixto Reyes, the community policeman, said. They patrolled only occasionally, and believed that the sicarios had moved back into town. “Some people are still trying to do something, but everyone is afraid now, and they don’t have any support from the government,” Anabel Hernández said. “It is not enough to fight them alone.”

There were people in Olinalá who felt that Salgado had brought trouble to the town. “Just because no one follows the law doesn’t mean you can make up your own law,” Bernardo Rosendo, who runs the art school, said. He was friendly with both Salgado and Patrón Jiménez, the prosecutor she had arrested. “She should have taken Patrón Jiménez to the authorities with proof. He was being punished under a law we had never heard of. How can you have a state within a state?” For some, it rankled that Salgado was free while several of her colleagues were still imprisoned. Among them was Gonzalo Molina, a CRAC-P.C. leader in the town of Tixtla, who was arrested after he protested Salgado’s detention by leading his force to disarm the Tixtla municipal police. Like others, he blames Salgado for not doing more to negotiate his freedom.

Not long after Salgado was released, I met her at her family’s apartment in Renton, a plain, comfortable place in a quiet neighborhood. The walls of the living room were filled with photos and illustrations of Salgado, sent by well-wishers; her children and grandchildren wandered in and out. Sitting on the couch, Salgado said that her intentions had been good: “We tried to bring peace to the town, to care for and protect everyone. We didn’t want to start a war.” (Rosendo put it another way: “No matter what happens, she has the conviction that she did what she had to do, and that it was the right thing to do.”) Salgado went on, “I did so many good things in my town. A lot of people liked me. The government accused me of so many things I didn’t do. Now they have accepted that I was within the law, but they took almost three years.”

Eusebio González Rodríguez, the mayor of Olinalá, told me that, while he respected Salgado, he found the actions of the community police dubious. “I always told the government of Guerrero that if it was authorizing self-defense groups then it would have to control them. It’s a situation that spiralled out of the state government’s control,” he said. “I didn’t agree with the fact that there was no limit to the community police’s function.”

The state still maintains that Salgado is a criminal; the Guerrero prosecutor has appealed her release. Álvarez, the state-security spokesman, said, “Even though she acted within Law 701, she went against the constitutional precepts that protect human rights.” Wary of the power that the law gives indigenous civilian forces, politicians have proposed that it be revised to regulate their work.

Salgado argues that crime fell dramatically while the community police were working in Olinalá and the surrounding towns. “There was nowhere for criminals to hide,” she said. “Yes, they can be selling drugs, but not in plain sight, like they used to.” State authorities also believe that the town’s security improved; they say that reports of crime actually increased, but suggest that it was because people felt more comfortable alerting authorities. And recent events have lent credence to Salgado’s charges of government malfeasance. In October, 2014, Aguirre, the governor, resigned amid outrage over the disappearance of the teacher trainees in Ayotzinapa. In his last days in office, he claimed that many of the municipal police forces were working with the cartels; the federal government has since disbanded a third of Guerrero’s municipal police departments. Rogelio Ortega, the interim governor of Guerrero, who replaced Aguirre, called the imprisonment of community policemen “a case of political prisoners.”

Salgado talks at times about going back to police work, although if she returns, she risks being detained by the government or killed by revenge-seekers. Ávila said he would support her. “We have many abandoned little towns in Guerrero, because people have been forced to leave,” he said. “We need to keep fighting.” He considered for a moment. “Of course, the day she decides to go back to Olinalá I’m going to worry a lot.”

In her living room, Salgado told me that she still fervently believed in the need for community police. “It’s the only choice people have in Guerrero,” she said. “They know that we can be in charge of our own security.” She shrugged. The cracks in her assurance were starting to show. “If they don’t want to do it, that’s on them,” she said. “But it’s the only option that we have.” ♦