Guatemalan vigilantes target gangs

From NPR:

Earlier this fall, the head of the Organization of American States warned that violent crime is an epidemic in Latin America, fueled by street gangs, drug trafficking and poverty. There, gun homicides are four times the world average.

In Guatemala, people have had enough of corrupt police and brutal extortions by gangs. They've turned to vigilantism. Lynch mobs and death squads are now commonplace. Twenty-five years ago, public enemy No. 1 was the leftist guerrillas who were at war with the government of Guatemala. They were branded subversives, delinquents, anti-social elements, and they were disappeared by death squads in the dark of night.

Today, the enemies of society are the maras, the street gangs whose members are estimated to number 80,000. And the violent campaign to eradicate them is called limpieza social, or social cleansing.
...
Today, gang members are in the cross hairs.

Operating under names like the Avenging Angels and the Justice Makers, hired hitmen called sicarios have changed the calculus of risk within which the gangs operate. There was a time when shootouts between gang members were the greatest threat. But today, it's not the same.

Article here.