Vigilantism: A Case Study on Mataperros de la Condesa

Western man has a special relationship with the idea of the vigilante. Though this concept isn’t exclusive to our civilization, a combination of our inherent individualism and sense of justice places this charter type close to our hearts. They abound in fiction of all forms: Batman, Charles Bronson’s character Paul Kersey in the Death Wish film series, the Punisher comic books and movies, and so on. Even as a boy, I remember liking the Casey Jones character in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie; he was human and his street justice had an edge to it worth admiring.

It should be no surprise that in our current fallen world, where every system of law seems to favor the criminal over the peaceful citizen, the role of the vigilante is all the more important; however, legal repercussions for this, too, are harsher than ever. This is partially why those on the Dissident Right lionize that rare, wild man (for it’s almost always a man) that actually stands in defiance of the tide, one of Savitri Devi’s men against time. Because of the increasingly bizarre nature of our current era, these defiant acts and the bold men that perpetrate them are all the more eccentric: killdozer, the barefoot bandit, and even the Seattle plane thief hold a special place in the hearts. Furthermore, it’s worth noting these were all men that, to one degree or another, were byproducts of our existing cancerous society; they tried to play nice and abide by the rules, but sooner or later, their inner Übermensch caught up with them.

Though it’s a controversial take, I offer one more to the list of greats: Mataperros de la Condesa. In Mexican it simply means “The Dog-Killer of Condesa,” which I could’ve led with, but it gives off a cool, bandito vibe in that cesspool’s native tongue. A brief synopsis of the story is as follows: in October of 2015, anywhere between 11 and 19 dogs were poisoned while being walked by their owners through Parque Mexico, a beautiful park complete with manicured lawns, flowing fountains, and art deco statues and architecture situated in Condesa, one of Mexico City’s most chic neighborhoods.

Before the circumstances of this archangel are fully analyzed, it’s worth noting that the vigilante can be viewed as an individual incarnation of populism. Acts of vigilantism, as long as they were in the common interest of a given group of people, have historically been met with anything ranging from casual acceptance to enthusiastic support.

A textbook example lies within the small town of Skidmore, Missouri. A local shitbag by the name of Ken Rex McElroy had terrorized citizens of this plains community for years, to include acts of rape, the molesting of children, attempted murder, burglary, and more. Somehow, he’d managed to evade the justice system for decades, doing only small stints of jail time that were miniscule when compared to his rap sheet. Such a nuisance was McElroy to the townsfolk, a meeting—which included the town sheriff—was held on how to best handle the situation. As the gathering concluded, the sheriff departed and dozens of residents walked across the street to where McElroy was drinking at a local bar. There they waited, and as he left the saloon he was shot dead. Forty-six witnesses were present, including McElroy’s wife, and no one even bothered to call an ambulance. This was not in the days of the frontier; it was 1981. A more large-scale instance is the Battle of Athens (Georgia) in 1946, where WWII veterans managed to overthrow a corrupt town government after they had tampered with ballots in a local election.

Sadly, in modern times, this type of concerned citizen direct action is not only ill-advised, but is outright foolish. A diverse, fractured society means there are no objective truths or community consensus. This spells disaster for targeted individuals when they attempt to right a wrong, all the while showing their face. Furthermore, in the age of subjective reality, everyone’s actions are righteous and good, seen through their own eyes or that of their camp. Did name-your-school-shooter think of himself as a vigilante, or any other idiot that attempted to harm innocent people?

Maybe the classic vigilante needs to be reinterpreted for contemporary times. On the notion of taking action, Charles Wilson, 1st Baron Moran had much to say in The Anatomy of Courage, written from his first-hand experiences in the trenches of the Great War. He states, “In the presence of danger man often finds salvation in action. To dull emotion he must do something [my emphasis]; to remain immobile, to stagnate in mind or body, is to surrender without terms.” (1) In an age where cowardice is mandated simply to exist, it is the opinion of this essayist that merely taking courageous action, of any kind and no matter how small, qualifies for vigilantism. Based on the state’s targeting of persons that go against the grain in any fashion, they, too, share this opinion. A once dispirited young man can still find purpose and justice within the confines of modernity. Though outwardly projecting adherence to the status quo may seem cowardly, a masked action of defiance can keep the soul intact.

A middle ground can be found in the ideas advanced by the Situationist International. Based heavily on Guy Debord’s concept of the spectacle, the situationists sought to break people free from the chokehold of capitalist-propagated materialism. They attempted to do this by creating situations, or “a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a game of events” that would awaken themselves and spectators from their societal comas. (2) Reader and would-be situationist beware, it is incredibly easy to come off like a turd theater kid if one would attempt to engage in this type of behavior. At this point in end-stage civilization, we’re all well aware of the feminist exhibitionist, megaphone pontificator, body art enthusiast, or any other type of tiresome “edgy” act that, unknowing to the instigator, actually reinforces the foundations of that which they claim to be undermining.

However, all that needs to be done is a simple reanalysis of what needs subverting. Author of Harassment Architecture, Mika Ma, has much to suggest:

I hear some people are buying tennis rackets and hitting medium-sized pebbles into wealthy and ethnic neighborhoods, from extremely far distances away. I hear some of the pebbles are smashing Escalade sunroofs, McMansion mega bay windows, and more. I hear nobody can figure out where it’s coming from. I hear some people call the cops but nothing ever happens. I hear some people are claiming to be repairmen, going inside offices, and leaving dead fish in the ceiling tiles. I hear some people are buying machetes in bulk and leaving them next to the homeless while they sleep… (3)

And the list goes on. The point is that not every vigilante needs to single-handedly take down a drug cartel or avenge the death of an innocent community member. And please, don’t make your own superhero costume. Ma goes on to say, “Acceleration isn’t just causing problems and watching the world contort in reaction. Acceleration is about causing problems the right way, the smart way, the kind of way that keeps you out of jail…” (4) Though this essay is not an exposé on accelerationism, Ma’s point about causing problems, taking action (being a vigilante), is worth emphasizing.

Enter Mataperros de la Condesa. Speaking on the potential motives of this unhinged maverick, local artist and longtime Condesa resident Guillermo Islas put forth the following theory: “There are sick people who do that (place poisoned food in the park), but there are also many dog owners who are hated because they walk to show off and don’t pick up the feces.” (5) And that’s it.

We’re all familiar with the boomer lady-empty nester, kooky wine aunt, or beta dad endlessly parading their dogs though your neighborhood or park. Their milieu is perfectly summarized by Delicious Tacos as a “sexless pet care utopia.” (6) They march these things around with such pride on their faces, as if they actually discharged them from their uteruses. They’ll let Precious, Shiloh, or some other lame-named fluff trot up to you and you have to stop and let it molest your shoe or pant leg. If you don’t, the owner is visibly offended or, at a minimum, vexed. I can’t count how many times I’ve taken my child, made in God’s own image, on a walk and had to stop and listen to some creature swap stories about their creature, as if they’re equals with my child. It makes me wish I could force them to watch me drown their sub-human (literally) in the bathtub. I could never actually do that because “it’s the owner, not the dog.” Whatever, this is primarily only older ladies and their “fur babies”; at least it’s not certain demographics letting pit-bulls roam the neighborhood to eat small children.

The truth is, and I know I’m going to take heat on this, more often than not, dogs are stand-ins for people that have failed to prove value to their fellow man. If you can’t find love, just go buy it at the pet store or “rescue” it at the pound. Same goes for an inability to make friends; your once-wild animal will always hang out with you, or eat you if you croak on the kitchen floor and no one is there to find you/feed Fido. Dogs won’t ever say no, or tell you you’re a loser. Dogs are for people that can’t sit in silence, or be comfortable alone. I can’t even walk through my own neighborhood (built by and for humans) without dogs incessantly barking at me through open windows and fences. They’re that stupid; they have to make noise every time a person or thing moves past their area. If that’s dumb, how moronic is the person that lets this happen in their own home? They sit there and listen to this without bother. They’re OK with noise; in fact, they need it to fill the void in their head. They’ll sit on the couch to watch their TV show on full volume while music simultaneously plays from another room and flash video noises emanate from the phone they’re staring at all the while Lassie leers at them, face-to-face, from two feet away, doing that loud breathing thing, on repeat, forever making breathing noises in your face over the cacophony of everything else, and people are just OK with it.

If I sound like Mexico City’s K-9 killer, it’s only because I sympathize with the potential motive. We’ve all experienced the rage of stepping in a steaming pile of dog shit, or laying on grass in a park, only to be hit with the musty smell of not-yet-dried piss. Even just watching a dog mom let her pooch lick – after potentially eating its own shit – her face and mouth is enough to go insane. If you don’t think any of these examples are disgusting, then you’re disgusting. As far as emotional support animals and therapy dogs go, I don’t think I can write anything without smashing the keyboard.

But action yields results. Reporting on the dog murderer stated, “The situation remains tense in the park, even after cleaning crews were sent by borough officials to use pressure washing to clean up any residual poison.” (7) Though the article goes on to say that dog walking did continue, albeit probably in fewer numbers, it was done “with caution.” This is a polite way to say people were scared, in a similar way a liberal advises caution when driving through certain neighborhoods. Though it was temporary, space was reclaimed, in a physical sense as well as in people’s minds.

Since it was 2015, sometime at the very tail end of the great before, press on the subject had yet to fully memory-hole absurd double-standards; journalists freely acknowledged, “In a country where tens of thousands of people have died in a drug war in which most crimes against humans go unsolved, the measures taken by the authorities to investigate the dog deaths has raised some eyebrows on social media.” (8) But, the parents of fur babies still had their voices heard: “‘All crimes must be investigated, those against dogs and humans. Those are lives that must be respected’” said a local man walking his golden retriever. (9) Yes, dogs are people, too.

Mexico City has again had irony at the forefront of recent reporting. “Californians and other Americans are flooding Mexico City. Some locals want them to go home” is the laughable title of a Seattle Times article. No American with half a brain is capable of not realizing the specific demographic that happens to be “flooding” our country as well. The Los Angeles Times also weighed in on the subject, repeatedly referencing the horrible impacts of gentrification on local inhabitants of the city; with that train of thought in mind, will L.A. Times writers applaud Condesa’s lone-wolf, since we all know it isn’t poor Mexicans walking their trophy dogs around for no reason? Remember what Guillermo Islas said, “They walk to show off.”

Maybe the Condesa killer needs to post an ad in Soldier of Fortune magazine as a gun-for-hire. Hopefully copycats will emerge; Detroit can use entire mechanized units of dog-annihilating armies. A city of 700,000 people that was built to house 2,000,000, Mo-Town is over half vacant. So desolate is this urban hellscape, people actually drive into the city to dump murder victims as opposed to out into the countryside. (10) In addition to astronomical levels of human-on-human crime, the land of Robocop has another type of violence: dog-on-human. With a city primarily populated by a certain demographic that holds a pension for pit-bull owning and generally poor pet care, the dystopian outcome of roving dogs marauding throughout the municipality has come to fruition. K-9 gangs are formed, eerily aping the behavior of their former “owners.” A 2013 article titled “50,000 abandoned dogs roaming streets of Detroit in packs” states “dogs have been spotted in groups as large as 20.” (11) The story goes on to say,

The city says there were 903 reported dog bites last year, including a woman who had her scalp bitten off by two strays. Attacks have become so prevalent that the U.S. Postal Service has temporarily halted delivery to some of Detroit’s neighborhoods after 25 carriers reported being bitten by dogs from October 2012 through July 2013. (12)

Six years later, the situation did not improve; another article titled “Vicious dog attacks persist in Detroit, even after deadly maulings, maiming” details the death of a nine-year-old girl. This was only a few years after a four-year-old boy was mauled to death by a pack of pit-bulls. (13) Again, I know, it’s the owner, not the dog; but has not one vigilante surfaced to address this problem in a way he sees fit?

I realize that Mataperros de la Condesa can potentially be compared to someone of the likes of Ken Rex McElroy; both harmed innocent people – well, animals in the former’s case – which is obviously against popular consensus, but there’s a hierarchy present in the Condesa Killer’s actions. Human priority and activity are clearly valued, even something as benign as not sitting in a puddle of piss in a common area. This trumps the narcissism of the dog walkers of Mexico City or, on the other end of the spectrum, the abandoners of Detroit, many of which only care how their appendage makes them look or feel. Again, they’re showing off, but someone took them down a peg by way of brutal action.

Killing animals that don’t deserve to die is not a defensible position, but, as I like to believe, in the eyes of Mexico City’s renegade, sacrifices have to be made to achieve a greater good. Thousands of Iberians needed to die to complete the Reconquista and several buildings with people inside them needed to fall down to reinvade the Middle East; in the case of Mataperros de la Condesa, not a single human lost their life but the results speak for themselves — the type of person that uses the term “fur babies” had pure fear struck into their hearts. That’s worth something.

Barely a few weeks after a pile of dead trophy dogs filled Condesa’s animal hospital, a suspect was put forth — a 75-year-old lady “who is reportedly fed up with the mess the animals were leaving in her garden.” (14) Though the reasoning for her killing spree may have been more personal (albeit aesthetic) than societal, if this old broad can affect change, so can you.