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The various experiments in community defense of organized groups in Guerrero and Michoacán, Mexico, to confront the insecurity produced by organized crime are occurring in a social setting in which legality and illegality are blurred—a grey area— as a function of regional economic reconfigurations that have fostered violence. The state uneasily tolerates the emergence of armed defense groups in the region by attempting to subject them to the model of citizen participation in security matters. Understanding these groups calls for supplementing current views about their various forms, which focus on their legality/illegality, with an emphasis on the relationship between them and the society and its dominant actors. Los diversos experimentos en defensa comunitaria de grupos organizados en Guerrero y Michoacán, México, para enfrentar la inseguridad producida por el crimen organizado ocurren en un entorno social, un área gris en la que la legalidad y la ilegalidad se difuminan en función de las reconfiguraciones económicas regionales que han fomentado la violencia. El Estado tolera con incertidumbre el surgimiento de grupos de defensa armados en la región al tratar de someterlos a un modelo de participación ciudadana en asuntos de seguridad. Para entender a estos grupos es necesario complementar los puntos de vista actuales sobre las diversas formas que toman, centrados en su legalidad o ilegalidad, con un énfasis en la relación entre ellos y la sociedad con sus actores dominantes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]