When local law enforcement can’t—or won’t—get the job done, someone’s always willing to take matters into their own hands. In Lagos de Moreno, a town in Mexico’s Jalisco state, that someone has been systematically binding alleged motorcycle thieves to lamp posts with duct tape and leaving them for authorities to discover.
Since mid-June, at least five men have been found immobilized in public, their foreheads marked with the word “thief.” The first victim appeared on June 13th, positioned alongside a motorcycle believed to be stolen—a calling card of sorts that suggested the perpetrator wasn’t interested in permanent harm, just public exposure. But what started as a single incident has evolved into a pattern, and now local authorities are scrambling to piece together who’s behind it.
Here’s where it gets murky. While the local population has been quick to dub the mystery vigilante the “Mexican Batman,” authorities aren’t convinced it’s a solo operation. Juan Pablo Hernández, Jalisco’s Secretary of Public Security, suggested the attacks might be the work of multiple people acting in concert. The bound men, however, haven’t provided much clarity on the matter—which raises its own questions about what they witnessed or what they’re afraid to reveal.
The internet’s reaction has been predictably divided. On Mexican social media, some celebrate the vigilante as a folk hero taking on a crime problem that institutions have failed to solve. Others condemn the extrajudicial tactics outright, pointing to the obvious: no one gets to be judge, jury, and executioner, no matter how justified the cause might feel. The uncomfortable truth is that this kind of frontier justice only works when you’re absolutely certain of guilt—and certainty is exactly what the legal system exists to establish.
This isn’t Mexico’s first brush with this particular brand of rough justice. Back in 2018, Puerto Vallarta saw at least 11 people stripped, bound to lamp posts, and marked with shaved letters on the back of their heads. That case was never solved, and neither perpetrator nor public ever got closure. The fact that we’re watching a similar script play out again in Lagos de Moreno suggests something deeper: a crisis of faith in institutions that’s spreading, and communities that feel abandoned enough to tolerate—or even cheer for—the rule of the mob.
