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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 Bot on Tuesday October 25 2016, @12:12AM
> First, you are begging the question that a city is the largest area a person can express concerns.
I justified it, read what follows. You might not agree but you cannot call it begging the question.
Compare the way Iceland and Greece (nation) dealt with the crisis. Did not the Greek want the same things as Iceland, what went wrong?
> Medici
In fact my history book did not call Florence a "Comune" but a "Signoria" when Medici started ruling. Duchy in English, I guess.
> Guilds
Yes, glorified mafia racket. But that is helping my argument. Today's mafia is not able to create as many socially stable jobs as they did, without killing, poisoning, people and economies. Today's economic system brags of opposing privileges, fostering competition, stop cartels and privileges, while in truth it only reduced everything to numbers, money. Why? because the rulers ruled using money, till now. Example, what is ISO 9001? it is a way to reorganize a business and document processes. to improve quality? Or to make any worker interchangeable, thus irrelevant? did you notice how quality skyrocketed since ISO 9000 and relatives took off? neither did I. In fact I should have stocked up on 70s bottle openers and zips.
> Dressed too good, Jus primae noctis...
You could get a knife in your belly because you did not give right of way to somebody who thought he had it.
OTOH now we have dressed poorly schoolmates that get cast off, gang rape of young girls, and lead in your belly because your skin is the wrong color. It seem invariant with the kind of government.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday October 25 2016, @04:43PM
> Compare the way Iceland and Greece (nation) dealt with the crisis. Did not the Greek want the same things as Iceland, what went wrong?
The Greeks are using the Euro, so they lost the ability to use currency tricks to reduce their troubles.
But if the Greeks had been a small town with the same scale of trouble, they would have gone bankrupt and/or got invaded by a neighbor, so the superstructure also saved their ass. (It's too nice there for a Detroit-style exodus)