(Madrid, 8. April 2023, to serve/everything to do).- It has been twelve years since the 14,000 mostly indigenous residents Cheráns got loud. The small town, located on the Michoacán plateau in southwestern Mexico, declared war on April 15, 2011. They had had enough of blackmail, kidnapping, rape and murder.
These made the indigenous community of purepecha to create since the beginning of the 21st century. In the form of drug gangs that were about to take complete control of the region. This started a social conflict with serious consequences for the community. The drug cartels were also in cahoots with Mexican authorities as part of a runaway system of extortion.
What logging means for the drug trade
Groups of drug traffickers plundered and expropriated fields, pastures and forests (especially holm oak groves). The so-called “talamontes(“Bergroder”) came to the area and cleared hundreds of hectares of forest to sell the wood. They devastated the region. These armed groups repeatedly violently abused the villagers: Cherán was forced to act on their orders and remain silent about what happened. All with the collaboration or inaction of the local authorities, who also got a piece of the pie.
Between 1976 and 2005, the Purépecha plateau lost around 20,000 hectares of forest due to this illegal clearing. According to estimates, this corresponds to 71 percent of the original forest area. Since 2006, with the arrival of a drug cartel in Michoacán, forest loss has also amounted to an additional 1,500 hectares per year.
This enormous deforestation is linked to the drug trade in two ways: On the one hand, the clandestine deforestation enables the construction of laboratories and safe roads for the drug transport. On the other hand, the timber trade is suitable for money laundering, as illegally felled timber is sold and commercial food can also be grown on the new land.
As of 2008, between 180 and 250 trucks were seen leaving Cherán every day. They were each loaded with three cubic meters of wood from native pines, holm oaks or the sacred fir, a species endemic to Mexico. It was also a common practice of organized crime to collect 1,000 Mexican pesos (about 50 euros) in protection money per truck.
What was left of the forest after clearing was burned. A law allowing clear-cutting of deadwood or after forest fires protected organized crime from punishment. So burning down the forest gave them cover for their illegal activities. Additionally, this dynamic enabled them to dispossess the local population of their forests.
From revolt to political self-government
In April 2011, the Cheranese were fed up with the whole system. They occupied their streets and defended themselves with the weapons they had: wooden sticks, machetes and other implements of their field work. This popular initiative, aimed as a revolt against that specific form of violence, developed into a real conflict with the Mexican state and a struggle for self-government. Even today, Cherán is seen as a successful example of how to organize from below in order to defend oneself against exploitative enemies.
Cherán also shows how to build a strong village community. How the idea of a long-awaited social organization can unleash a revolt against any authority – and against a whole system of oppression that makes problems invisible. The eyewitness account of a resident makes this clear: “It took us a few hours to respond, but we did it. We said: folks, we’ll fight back, that’s enough. The entire village stood up, whether women, young people, children, just everyone. We stopped the vehicles, set them on fire and captured the loggers.”
From that point on there was no going back. What could have been a momentary riot of anger evolved into a true rebellion and culminated in communal self-government. The struggle initially focused on defending the forests, but quickly expanded beyond the original demands against loggers. Because the whole place had suffered from organized crime and the collaborating authorities. While representatives could be elected in sham elections every three years, they were in fact chosen by the interests of the drug gangs.
In this context of commercializing their lands and taking control of their lives, the villagers had little to nothing to lose by rebelling. People now understood the power structures in local politics and decided not to be subdued by the ruling PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, with authoritarian and right-wing tendencies) in the city council either.
The people of Cherán organized street barricades and set up checkpoints at the entrances and exits for their safety. Neither drug dealers nor the police allowed access. A unit was formed that did not function as a police against the community, but rather served as a means of self-defense for the small town. This “community patrol‘ consisted of one hundred volunteers. The “Great Municipal Council of the Keri’s Government”, a kind of council of elders, is still responsible for the election of the members. And the municipal guard is still responsible for ensuring that no weapons that could fall into the hands of the loggers enter Cherán’s territory. They also prevent alcohol, drugs or campaign advertising from official parties from entering the town.
This process of autonomy developed during 2011. At the same time, Cherán created a provisional, provisional administration. These included food, water supply, boroughs, press, and surveillance committees. But the Cheranese had no hopes that anything could be achieved legally. Nevertheless, they liked to imagine what self-government would be like.
Then, in November 2011, the municipality of Cherán refused to vote for official parties in municipal elections, as they had previously done. Instead, they began to expand their self-government politically, using the customs of the Purépecha. In the years that followed, Cherán networked with other indigenous communities in Mexico, some of whom have also been fighting for their autonomy for decades.
Today fear, suspicion and disunity are gone from Cherán. The population lives a communal life. The social self-determination that Cherán has achieved has improved her social and private life immensely. Outsiders can see that too. The bonfires at the small town sentry posts, which continue to protect against outside attacks, have become popular meeting places. Here Cheranese exchange their opinions, here the political ideas of the community are born. At the same time, the campfires are still the center of Cherán’s self-government.
The experiences here provide a good example of how a multi-layered society can organize itself well, build a strong sense of self-defense and establish direct action against abusers – and still bring about a long-sought peace to heal the wounds left by the Mexican state and left behind by the drug trade.
commemorating the resistance
Twelve years after Cherán’s autonomous organization, the elements of self-government are still intact. Own experience and contact with similar fighting on Mexican soil kept the guards firing. They know they brought social justice, dignity and a desire for self-government to Cherán. In the past twelve years, the village has also been able to stop illegal deforestation. Today, the wood from the Cheran forests can only be used if it benefits society.
In addition, the people of Cheran have made great progress in reforestation – Cherán does not only think about today’s prosperity, but also about tomorrow. They have also adapted the education system so that students can learn what it takes to live in dignity. The history of Purépecha is also taught – a subject that has rarely been on the curriculum before. In addition, today the school teaches instruments to maintain Cherán’s autonomy and the fight against adversaries.
Because what was normal in Cherán until twelve years ago was an environment of intolerable inequality and extreme violence. However, the fact that crime and subjugation prevail can also be transferred to other places in Mexico – wherever the capitalist system dominates. Neoliberalism operates by wiping out every shred of social harmony and destroying living in harmony with nature. The system is always trying to put us in extreme shock and live in exhausting violence. From there there are only two options: socialism or barbarism.
With his self-defence, Cherán was looking for social freedom for his people, for a strong village community and horizontal power structures instead of hierarchies. A political system has emerged in which decisions are made collectively. The people of Cherán create institutions with the aim of ensuring that no new hierarchies and power structures arise. They see capitalism as a dystopian mirror that has shattered into pieces. He usually creates an opposition to himself that is a reflection of the worst in his womb, brutally inheriting some emancipatory strategies from that authoritarianism. The power of the social force must avoid the reproduction of these dominant relations that we know from the capitalist system – and instead produce other social formations from other relations with a horizontal and collective character.
Likewise, socioeconomic production must take place under different paradigms. For Cherán, these are paradigms that are not based on the commercialization of resources in a neoliberal market. From the community and indigenous perspective of the Purépecha in Michoacán, interpersonal or human-nature relationships are in no way compatible with the capitalist domination they impose through drug cartels, police officers, and classical political structures.
The autonomy gained in Cherán goes far beyond a mere rebellion against the injustices and crimes committed by loggers. The small town has reinvented itself: With their own institutions and direct democracy, the residents resist the oppression of the Mexican state apparatus. In this way they have created a real alternative society against the state – in the middle of a country where there have been resistance movements and autonomous governments of indigenous communities for decades.
Translation: Patricia Haensel
Rebellion in Cherán: The small town that threw out politicians, drug cartels and the police by News Pool Latin America is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 international.