
Cheran: A town that threw out police, politicians and gangsters - kawera
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37612083?utm_content=buffer3736b
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code_sardaukar
As a former "left-anarchist" I'm familiar with this sort of story. We had
similar stories of left-anarchist utopias from (1) pirates (2) partisans in
the Spanish civil war and (3) various "workers collectives" throughout
history. None of them lasted and most collapsed due to _internal_ problems not
being crushed by the nation state.

What has been shown to work in the long run, is Western democracy.

~~~
redial
That is a very skewed view of history. The Roman Empire lasted around 400
years. The British Empire controlled the world for almost 300 years (and the
monarchy is still in place after almost 1000 years), and those are only two
examples. The US was _founded_ in 1776, The French Revolution, that gave birth
to the modern Western Democracy concept happened around 1790, that is at most
240 years, and it only became predominant after WWI, so around 100 years.
Although in my opinion superior (or maybe i'm just biased), western democracy
is not assured to work in the long run, many countries after adopting it have
gone back to monarchies or dictatorships. And after all, all forms of
government that preceded it have been replaced.

~~~
restalis
Democracies are demanding the political leaders to limit their power both in
mandate time-span and share of it by seeking consensus among parties with
different views. This forces the governance to be moderate by design compared
to chosen moderation of other forms of government. However, this presents
itself as an attack surface from external powers. Political interference is
way easier. Also, to be in democracy leadership role, considering its power
limitations, may be quite frustrating if you want to get results quickly. This
alone is enough to explain a few of relapses to dictatorships through power
encroachment by ambitious political leaders. Add in here other political
context deficiencies like weak political opposition and dirty (as in crime-
like) measures of rivalry, and you get the idea. The populace may live
"content" by various degrees in many forms of governance, but this is not what
is supposed to comprise a defining differentiation. The real difference lies
in the inherent ability to cope with various challenges (that have to be dealt
with on political levels), my favorite of which is change in all of its forms.
All forms of governance have benefits and drawbacks and employing the right
one is tricky, it's an ongoing experiment that humans are yet to learn from.

~~~
redial
We are in agreement then, democracies can fall for lots of reasons. They also
have the potential to be very successful.

My point is democracy as it stands today is very young and if you only compare
it against the failed attempts of Communism you will miss almost all of
civilized human history.

~~~
dforrestwilson1
Yeah that makes sense, but it seems fair to argue that relative to other forms
of government, a properly balanced democracy which offsets the functions of
government tends to be more stable and last longer than competing alternatives
such as dictatorships or communism.

~~~
restalis
Dictatorship (or totalitarianism, my preferred term for it) is not assured to
be unstable. If done right, the totalitarian regimes manage to periodically
weed out the internal threats, including dissidence, and thus keep the
remaining masses content, a trick employed at least since the dawn of written
history with Ancient Egyptian police[1]. As I see it, the totalitarian
political system however, being one of the most rigid of all, is more prone to
corruption than others. (You may think of the pun about power tending to
corrupt and absolute dictatorial power - absolute corruption, but I'm more
about the precarious ability to react to different form of corruption.) The
communism's main idea is to please the majority, which happens to be the mass
of mediocre, at the expense of the the ambitious minority, the needs of which
are taking a back seat. This makes communism a lesser environment for
development, but it's not in itself a destabilizing factor.

[1]
[http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/law_and_order/police.htm](http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/law_and_order/police.htm)

------
phantom_oracle
When reading stories like these, I sometimes wonder how happy these modified-
subsistence-living folk are.

They will likely never see most places beyond their small farming-community
town, probably won't do air/train/ship travel and they probably will never see
even $X00,000 in net-worth.

But sometimes it seems that they are probably happier than the rest of us.
Sitting in our cubicles, working 80 hours per week for 40-hour/week jobs, just
to earn that little more money or get a slightly better job-title.

While they enjoy the land, the openness and live directly next to nature, the
rest of us just "consume".

We eat, cohabit and slog away the valuable asset of time, just to repeat this
cycle. We site behind keyboards, spending "10,000" hours mastering things that
don't matter as much as the food we need from these kinds of people (who seem
like farmers). We create pointless profiles and indulge in the gamification of
these centralized ad-monsters, who steal our time through artificial "likes",
"retweets", "upvotes", "stars", etc.

Granted, these people are homogenous and can make a system like this work. I
just hope that the poison of alcoholism doesn't ruin them and what they're
attempting to do in a country that is somewhat ravaged by drugs/cartels (or
pointed out to be by the centralized mass-media cartel).

~~~
rdtsc
> But sometimes it seems that they are probably happier than the rest of us.

I remember one episode of Anthony Bourdain from years ago. He was in some
South American country in a village and he went along to gather some yucca
with a local farmer. Saying how great these people live in communion with
nature and so on. And the farmer looks at him and says something to the effect
of "you can have this, how about a trade". Meaning "you get to farm yucca and
I go to live in your apartment in New York".

Not sure what my point even is, but I think it is about choice. It is ok if
they end up living and doing that by choice, but if they are forced by
circumstance they might feel trapped. We can go and start farming and living
like this (I would certainly fail there quickly). But if they want to, they
can't come and sit in cubicles and get paid for it.

~~~
shitgoose
it is not about living in NYC vs Mexican jungle. it is about living in Mexican
jungle _with_ or _without_ gangsters/politicians/police. who knows, maybe we
should try that too.

~~~
rdtsc
Sorry, I did diverge from the topic at hand. I didn't respond directly to the
article but rather, the GP's comment made me remember something from a show I
saw a while ago. So I wasn't talking specifically about Cheran but rather
about the idea of how it might be nice to live a simple life like they do, and
that often the simple part might be not as simple.

~~~
shitgoose
\- you are right, GP digressed first

\- our lives may not look that "sophisticated" to someone who travels to
Monaco in private plane on a whim; all our "sophistication" is only in our
heads

\- generally speaking, i was amazed how defensive most people in this thread
became, when they faced the fact that somewhere _really_ far away in Mexican
jungle _some_ people dared to chose to live without
gangsters/police/politicians; people here are almost offended by that
possibility and started coming up with poorly designed straw man arguments
(like GP) just to take attention away from the subject

~~~
rdtsc
> i was amazed how defensive most people in this thread became,

I should have prefaced it with that I really admire what they did. When we
protest in the West we go out and draw large sign and march in front of the
White House. Then we go home to our warm beds. Or we write angry messages on
the internet from the comfort of our own homes.

I think what these people did is the real form of protest.

~~~
shitgoose
"what these people did is the real form of protest"

yes! and personally i would say, that they returned to normal.

------
adrianratnapala
This is all interesting food for thought. I can't say I am thrilled by what
that town is doing, but I can imagine it is better than the _status quo ante_.

It makes you wonder if the nation-state model of government has been extended
into places where earlier, tribal models would have been less bad. And Mexico
isn't even much of a failure.

Here is the kind of thing that makes me quesy:

 _Its ban on political parties, meanwhile, has been upheld by the courts,
which have confirmed its right not to participate in local, state or federal
elections._

OK, I see why they have the ban. But it also to curtails the right of the
individual citizens to vote. Should any collective really have that right in a
democracy?

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mkstowegnv
Commenters who are framing this story in left/right/utopian politics are
missing the point and not letting the brutality of the situation sink in
enough to suppress their need to grind philosophical axes. It is a shame that
apparently no Mexican HN visitors have come by to set them straight or perhaps
they turned away in disgust at all the blather. I am just an ignorant gringo
who has been briefly to Michoacan and heard talks by Cheran villagers at a
conference, but anyone can see that these are heroic apolitical indigenous
people who have invented a functioning government on the fly and under fire.
One aspect that I have not seen mentioned outside of the talks I heard (and I
am sorry that I could not quickly find a reference) is that early on they
realized that choosing corruptible leaders would be fatal, and they came up
with an unusual rule requiring that leaders be godparents - (a double filter
as it requires unusual trustworthiness to be asked to raise children in the
event of parental death and unusual generosity to accept.)

------
Steeeve
> Political parties were banned - and still are - because they were deemed to
> have caused divisions between people.

What an insightful thing to do.

~~~
gaius
Indeed, the North Koreans are proof!

~~~
Steeeve
NK actually has 4 political parties and independants.

------
yumaikas
I admire this community banding together to kick out the (rather corrupt, if I
understand Mexico) police, politicians and gangsters. It would be nice if most
Americans would self govern at the same level, be we seem to have too many
differences to be able to pull that off outside of the stray small town.

------
dharma1
Reminds me of the autodefensas, as depicted in the excellent documentary
Cartel Land

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel_Land](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel_Land)

------
exabrial
If they threw out lawyers and insurance companies, hell I'd move there :P

~~~
jrochkind1
I doubt there are any lawyers or insurance companies in Cheran. I also doubt
you'd want to live there. They did what they did out of a necessity most of us
would rather not have.

------
finid
_" 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."_

Just reading the article almost brought me to tears, too.

------
HillaryBriss
> _Every vehicle is stopped, its occupants questioned about where they have
> come from and where they are going._

This is great and all, but it's not truly consistent with an American style of
democracy which respects the rights of individuals to travel freely.

It's easy to imagine what would happen to any US city/county/region which set
up a check point with the sole purpose of asking those questions of every
person who passed through it.

~~~
redial
Almost every country in the world does this. The US certainly does at every
border. In fact, in the US you could be stoped and searched almost anywhere if
police think they have even a hint of probable cause, and if they don't and
just don't like you they might even create it.

~~~
HillaryBriss
Countries yes. But, in the OP, it's about a local region within Mexico. The
checkpoints are created not by the federal government in Mexico, but by some
people in a local region.

My point was that, within the US, a city/county/regional government would
ultimately not be allowed to do this.

My comment was not about the US Federal government.

As for DUI checkpoints, though they are conducted by local law enforcement,
such checkpoints do not ask people the same questions as the checkpoints in
the original story and they do not exhaustively stop and check everyone on all
the roads leading into a region.

So, I'm not seeing a serious criticism of my original comment.

