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In Mexico, organised crime reaches everywhere, even into the smallest village - except for one small town in the state of Michoacan. Led by local women, the people of Cheran rose up to defend their forest from armed loggers - and kicked out police and politicians at the same time.
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Early on Friday 15 April 2011, Cheran's levantamiento, or uprising, began. On the road coming down from the forest outside Margarita's home, the women blockaded the loggers' pick-ups and took some of them hostage. As the church bells of El Calvario rang out and fireworks exploded in the dawn sky alerting the community to danger, the people of Cheran came running to help. It was tense - hotheads had to be persuaded by the women not to string up the hostages from an ancient tree outside the church.
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The municipal police arrived with the mayor, and armed men came to free their hostage-friends. There was an uneasy stand-off between the townspeople, the loggers and the police. It ended after two loggers were injured by a young man who shot a firework directly at them. And Cheran - a town of some 20,000 people - began its journey towards self-government."It makes me want to cry remembering that day," says Margarita. "It was like a horror movie - but it was the best thing we could have done."
The police and local politicians were quickly driven out of town because the people suspected they were collaborating with the criminal networks. Political parties were banned - and still are - because they were deemed to have caused divisions between people. And each of the four districts of Cheran elected representatives to a ruling town council. In many ways, Cheran - a town populated by the indigenous Purepecha people - returned to its roots: to the ancient way of doing things, independent of outsiders.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday October 24 2016, @06:39PM
> Also I think they charged less taxes.
Wishful thinking. between the bread tax, the bridge tax, the salt tax, the harvest tax, the Church tax and a few other annoyances, those huge castles weren't only there to shield the rich from foreign people...
(Score: 3, Informative) by RamiK on Monday October 24 2016, @10:39PM
No he was right they paid pocket change compared to nowadays: http://www.medievalists.net/2015/07/16/how-much-taxes-did-a-medieval-peasant-pay-the-numbers-from-sweden/ [medievalists.net] until https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/07/03/tea-taxes-and-the-revolution/ [foreignpolicy.com]
Putting it altogether, it was around 10% church, 10% lord\monarch on average. Maybe 5% more in indirect taxes but those were very rare. In Elizabethan times it was 15-20% total as well. But the colonies paid, at most including everything, 5%.
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday October 24 2016, @10:53PM
First, he said "medieval", which doesn't typically apply to the colonists who were definitely post-renaissance.
Second, the functions performed by governments have evolved quite a bit since, especially if you're thinking in "colonists" terms.
Apples, meet durian.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday October 25 2016, @10:09AM
I provided two sources separately discussing the high-medieval period and the later early colonial one precisely to demonstrate even the added burden of maintaining the colonial efforts didn't increase taxation.
Besides, for every added governmental function, there been greater increases in productivity. Especially when you take privatization (East India Company wasn't the first of it's kind and reach) into account.
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