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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: 5, Informative) by jelizondo on Monday October 24 2016, @09:29PM
It’s been five years of self-rule for the people of Cheran.
First, Cheran is a small town and part of a larger municipality composed of different communities, many smaller than Cheran where most of the inhabitants are indigenous people, called purépecha. The political parties were seen as causing division amongst the people; the government as letting bandidos mess with the sacred forest and the bandidos with getting away with worse than murder.
Second, after the events, the mayor of the municipality tried to recover the government and then the State government intervened, to no effect. They were thrown out of town and the people demanded their right to self-rule. The Federal government, in a rare case of correctly applying the law, determined that under the Constitution they had the right to rule themselves according to their uses and customs.
Third, there is no mob rule as some have remarked. Each community elects in assembly and by a show of hands a representative to the Consejo Mayor (Great Council) that rules the municipality. There is no mayor or president; the Council delegates a particular function to one or a few representatives, like traveling to the State capital and attending a meeting.
Fourth, Cheran is the only town in Mexico where garbage is almost entirely recycled. A garbage truck collects organic material, a second run collects recyclable material (paper, glass, metals) and a third run, “unsanitary garbage” including alkaline batteries. Goes to show the kind of things a government of the people, by the people and for the people can accomplish.
An interesting interview a couple of years after the uprising of a then Council member, at Al Jazeera [aljazeera.com]