AN UNEASY peace has settled on Apatzingán, a 99,000-strong city in western Mexico. The federal government this week sent in troops to disarm “self-defence” groups operating in Michoacán, Mexico’s most troubled state. The deployment came as these groups advanced on Apatzingán, the stronghold of a vicious gang called the Knights Templar, which controls drugs, extortion and other crime rackets.

The vigilante groups sprang up a year or so ago. They say they are protecting their communities against the Templars. Others suspect that the vigilantes are themselves linked to a rival gang, called Jalisco New Generation, which also covets Michoacán’s lawless Tierra Caliente (“hot lands”). The state is criss-crossed by drug-smuggling routes linked to Mexico’s second-biggest port, Lázaro Cárdenas.

Michoacán represents the biggest challenge to President Enrique Peña Nieto’s claim that violent crime has waned since he took office late in 2012. In a speech on January 13th Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, the interior minister, described the state’s recent bloodshed as “unparalleled and unprecedented” and ordered forces to intervene. The self-defence groups say they are filling a void in law enforcement; Mr Osorio retorted that, if they wanted to protect their communities, they should join the local police instead.

But the government’s position on the vigilantes remains ambiguous. Their self-proclaimed leader, José Manuel Mireles, is recovering from broken ribs sustained in a recent plane crash (“I’m not 100% well,” he acknowledges from a secret site in Mexico City, with notable understatement). When Mr Mireles was still in hospital, Mr Osorio admitted, he had enjoyed official protection because he has “wounded the cartels, particularly the Templars”. That implied that the authorities were tacitly using him. Other self-defence leaders confirm that they have been supported by federal forces.

Mr Mireles says his men will give up their arms only when the drug traffickers have been arrested, leaving the militiamen and the military in a wary, watchful stand-off. In Nueva Italia, a market town close to Apatzingán, scores of young gunmen still patrol in trucks and cars. Some are clearly enjoying the adventure. “Over there you can go to see a movie,” says one, recently deported from the United States. “Here I am living it.”