It has made Hollywood rich and John Wayne famous: a Mexican town is tormented by outlaws until a pistol-savvy American cowboy rides in, defeats the bad guys, and restores peace to the small farming community.

But this ain’t Hollywood.

Welcome to Práxedis Guadalupe Guerrero, a border town of 8,500 residents and a municipality of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. It is the epicenter of the illegal drug trade, where 20-year-old Marisol Valles Garcia recently accepted the position of chief-of-police, a year and a half after her predecessor was beheaded as a warning to authorities, according to the Guardian.

Valles Garcia’s jurisdiction is the same territory made famous by Billy the Kid and the Apaches, but today horses have been replaced by pick-ups, rifles by automatics, and herds of stolen cattle by shipments of illegal drugs. And the Magnificent Seven have been replaced by an undergraduate who likes her nails painted pink.

“To those who say we are naive and she doesn’t have the experience, we say that the traditional methods have not worked,” said the Mayor’s Chief of Staff Andres Morales, to The Guardian. “We know that the results will not be immediate. We are thinking of the medium and long-term. — of laying the foundations for something better in the future.”

What was once a peaceful farming community has turned into a drug cartel’s haven. Violence has erupted between two rival gangs — the Juárez and Sinaloa — over total control of the town’s only highway, reports Fox News. The consequences of the conflict have devastated the surrounding communities, law enforcement, and government. But Valles Garcia’s concerns stretch further than her town’s crumbling infrastructure.

“I am frightened, I am only human,” Garcia told the Guardian. “But you have to learn to trust and to have hope that things can change,”

The public waits to see if that change will also come in the form of an unharmed police chief.

So far this year in Chihuahua, Mexico, 11 mayors have been murdered, and many police chiefs have been targeted, according to PBS. Last year, 2,600 people were killed in Juárez, a town in close proximity to Práxedis. In the last four years, 28,000 people have been killed, giving Chihuahua the highest murder rate in the world — a claim to fame Mexican officials hope to lose.

Meanwhile, citizens feel helpless.

“This is a town without law,” said local farmer Arturo Gomez to Fox News. “It is not likely things will change from one day to the next, but let’s see what a woman can do… things can’t get any worse.”

At night, drug cartels drive through the town in convoys of pick-up trucks, asserting their uncontested dominance, reports MSNBC. With weaponry intimidating to both local and federal officers, cartels leave an unambiguous message in the form of a bullet-ridden police station: it’s our way or the highway.

Although in this case, they own the highway too.

According to MSNBC, local and federal police officers divert their patrol routes to avoid confrontation on roads that are heavily traveled on by drug traffickers. Often threatened, many police officials either surrender to corruption, quit or are killed, according to Fox News. Fighting a war against violent and wealthy drug cartels with underpaid and undereducated police and military has been a losing battle. It is this desperation that is behind Valles Garcia’s alternative measures.

Her crime fighting strategy is purely preventative. Garcia will not be armed, although she will have two body guards with her at all times. Hiring nine female police officers out of 13, they will venture door to door and promote family values, reported PBS.

“We are only going to do crime prevention work,” said Garcia to the Guardian. “We do not have the means to take them (organized crime) on. Taking on the other stuff is the job of the state and federal authorities.”

Whether pure prevention is the realistic crime fighting strategy, her department’s resources limit her department’s ability to take on more aggressive strategies.

To fight these dangerous drug gangs armed with automatics, sniper rifles, car bombs, and more, Garcia is in charge of one working patrol car, three automatic rifles, and a single pistol, reports The Guardian.

Though the obstacles in front of Garcia may be extreme, many are optimistic.

“To her credit, she understands this is not just a crime problem but a political problem,” said Justice and Policy Studies Professor Sanjay Marwah. “She is saying they don’t have the resources, there’s a lot of corruption, the drug trade has devastated that part of Mexico significantly, and the violence has taken over and impacted communities, families and individuals. She has basically said that we need to pay attention to these issues and take a new approach.”

According to Marwah, Garcia recognizes the need to attack the roots to bypass the thorns.

“Crime prevention necessitates directly addressing the underlying root conditions of the problem, especially within her jurisdiction,” Marwah explained. “You can’t just expect it to go away. She is understaffed, and she doesn’t have the equipment. From her perspective she has to take a different approach because she doesn’t have the weaponry, equipment, personnel. They receive some assistance from the military but they’re undermanned too.”

However, others believe Garcia to be a ploy, a puppet with strings controlled by Mexican authorities.

“This whole situation of making a female chief of police with more female officers is just an act and a performance by the government to alleviate international pressure,” said Olivia Elias, assistant professor of Spanish and a Nogales native. “No one believes in the government right now, this is just a way for the government to say they care about women and say ‘look, we put a woman as chief of police!'”