The Mexican government is continuing to try to ease the standoff that has gripped the Tierra Caliente region of the western state of Michoacan over the last week as new revelations suggest that former U.S. residents might be moving into the area to join the armed conflict.

Simple citizens have begun to take up arms to oppose Mexican drug cartels, especially in western areas of the country where law enforcement has traditionally been sparse or, as some allegations suggest, tied to the very organized crime groups they are supposed to be combating.

Others have accused some of these "autodefensas" groups as being front organizations supported by rival cartel groups working to wrest power in a particular area away from the dominant cartel.

The situation has been made even more tense by the recent dispatching of federal police and military units to those areas in an effort to get armed citizen groups to put down their weapons and disband. Violence gripped the Tierra Caliente region, centered in the city of Apatzingan, earlier in the week with gunfights erupting between the Knights Templar cartel and the armed vigilantes, and later between those same vigilante groups and the Mexican military.

The LA Times reports that as recently as Wednesday, a window washer in the town of Quadratin was injured when shots were fired at the office of the local federal prosecutor according to reports from the local news media. On Thursday, federal forces arrested one man after a local pharmacy was set on fire in Apatzingan. The government forces moving into the area on Wednesday claimed to have arrested prominent cartel leaders Joaquin Negrete and Jorge Fabian Quezada. Vigilantes had said they would not stand down unless the government began taking decisive action against the cartel.

By and large the violence has subsided, as the federal government responded to thwart what was quickly being seen as a potential catastrophic situation. But the federal presence does not yet have the trust of the local citizenry.

"Federal authorities, instead of imposing order, instead of rescuing the cities, they are more like referees," Jose Antonio Ortega of the Citizens Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice, told CNN. "They are watching the civil war in Michoacan."

Today the Global Post published interviews conducted with members of the armed militia who were recent arrivals from the United States, one of which claimed to be a U.S. Army veteran but refused to give his name or details.

Another, who left the U.S. to avoid a minor drug charge, told the news agency he considers himself a "guerilla."

"We're here to defend the people. They tell us whatever they need," said Adolfo Silva, who was raised in Santa Ana, Calif. "You are more into it. Over there you might go see a movie. Here you are in the movie. I am living it."