This is the best summary I could come up with:

Armed only with sickles and hunting rifles, they chased down suspected gang members amid bursts of automatic gunfire on 8 December, hacking, shooting and burning them.

The abducted adults include three policemen who were seized at a cartel roadblock, and a wounded villager the gang snatched from a hospital soon after the clash.

But residents of the village and a nearby hamlet said the Familia Michoacana drug cartel was demanding they hand over the leaders of the uprising, in exchange for releasing the kidnapped children and adults.

Cervantes said none of the villagers would face charges for the 8 December clash, because the confrontation had been classified as “legitimate self-defense” because the farmers were defending their properties.

Gunmen from the Familia Michoacana cartel, which has long dominated the area, had showed up in the village earlier, demanding local farmers pay an extortion fee.

Drug cartels in Mexico have been known to extort money from almost any legal or illegal business that they can, sometimes attacking or burning ranches, farms or stores that refuse to pay.

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