
Cheran: The town that threw out police, politicians and gangsters (2016) - sudoaza
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37612083
======
int_19h
Their method of local organization is very similar to the Zapatistas, or more
recently, Rojava - both also shift the focus of governance onto the local
level, where it can be done by the community itself as much as possible.

The details of the system in Rojava are better documented - they have a
written constitution, for starters, but there's also more media scrutiny
because of the war, producing some very detailed write-ups. Both can be
fascinating to read:

[https://corporatewatch.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/09/Strugg...](https://corporatewatch.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/09/Struggles-for-autonomy-in-Kurdistan.pdf)

[https://www.scribd.com/document/441234886/Social-Contract-
of...](https://www.scribd.com/document/441234886/Social-Contract-of-the-
Democratic-Federation-of-Northern-Syria)

~~~
cultus
These systems (most explicitly Rojava) are similar to Murray Bookchin's [0]
ideas on libertarian municipalism. Basically, control over economy and
environment is mostly devolved to the local level, with citizen's assembly and
that sort of thing. It does seem to work well in practice, which is really
encouraging.

It's obvious now that we need a fundamental reorganization of our political
economy for both material well-being and the climate. Something along these
lines would probably be the best. The future will hopefully be much, much,
more local in physical production and distribution. In such a scenario it
would only make sense to keep power democratic and on the local level.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin)

~~~
hippich
I see a lot of parallels between political organizations, organisms, computer
systems, etc. A larger system with vertical integration is more efficient at
producing the result. In our life it manifests itself in affordable mobile
phones, being able to launch a satellite, small amount of time necessary to
understand contractual expectations, etc.

But the larger the system - higher are the stakes if something goes wrong -
eg. economy in 2000 -> 2008 -> 2020\. In nature usually there are external
factors that seem to do well at keeping systems from growing too much. I
wonder what could be an equivalent in the political environment (without
Darwinism and constant death of many to find the fittest ones).

~~~
sudoaza
I'd say organisms are not so much vertical organized but homeostatic, the
likes of cybernetic control of old cyberneticians. Like the brain doesn't say
each cell what to do, cells share the environment, each signals their state,
needs and reach to their local environment. In that sense you would share
information (on production, on the state of the environment, on needs) and
each local community would react in accord to move that shared environment
towards homeostasis. But even organisms aren't perfect, think of your body,
when you consume great amounts of carbs your body secrets insulin in a
negative feedback and actually overshoots sending glucose levels bellow
optimal which eventually fixes itself after several cicles of self correction.

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

What an excellent idea.

~~~
smabie
It sounds like a good idea, but unfortunately it's mathematically unstable and
doesn't form any sort of equilibrium (Nash or otherwise). Any participant can
gain an advantage by grouping up with one other participant. Once everyone has
grouped up into pairs, they will then group up again and again, ultimately
creating a two party system.

~~~
derefr
Why even allow grouping (politically) into pairs? The town could just ban non-
politicians from expressing _political speech_ entirely (as a social norm, not
a law.)

Politicians could still speak politically in the form of campaigning; but
they'd not be allowed to make reference to _other politicians '_ positions on
things; only to speak about their own beliefs on how things should be/how
things should work.

For anyone who isn't an actively-campaigning politician, the only political
speech you'd be allowed would be (private-ballot) voting. Anything else would
get you shunned by the community.

(Yes, I realize how ridiculous this sounds.)

~~~
aphextron
>The town could just ban non-politicians from expressing political speech
entirely (as a social norm, not a law.)

And who enforces that ban? Who picks the person that enforces it? How are they
held accountable? Who are they held accountable to?

You see everything is politics, whether we like it or not.

~~~
derefr
It’s a social norm—everyone enforces it, and everyone also punishes those who
don’t enforce it. Compare/contrast: being punished for using a cellphone in an
Amish community.

------
shadowprofile77
The commentary here seems to miss a certain basic point about the situation
with Cheran (and many other regions of Mexico, where I live, that are
controlled by autodefensas groups and other types of local vigilante security
groupings).

What the people of Cheran did is worthy of applause, because it brought some
measure of peace in the middle of a desperate situation of insecurity, extreme
violence and governments that at both the federal and state level are almost
catastrophically corrupt on guaranteeing security.

However, for this very reason it's a sad thing to see. The single most basic
debt to society that a government owes in return for paying taxes and agreeing
to its rule is a monopoly on violence that's fair and sufficient enough to
prevent rampant criminality, yet Mexico suffers from the latter so severely
that large swathes of the country are firmly outside the government's supposed
rule of law, and make small towns and regions have no choice but to take
measures like these.

Who knows how sustainable this is, or its long term ramifications. What it
definitely does do is further weaken that same government's capacity for
reestablishing its main responsibility.

The government of Mexico of course knows this, and so do the state governments
that supposedly have authority over places like Cheran. For this reason (and
for reasons of extreme corruption) they not only resent vigilante efforts like
these or any attempts by private citizen groups to defend themselves with
weapons or by other means, but also often actively, violently try to impede
them "legally" despite not being able to replace these localized security
measures with a useful reformation of their own.

This is done under the pretext that non-state armed security groupings are
dangerous to public safety, but curiously, the same efforts at curbing heavily
armed groups outside the law seem to evaporate when it comes to curbing the
power and rampant impunity of cartels that also control whole regions much
more viciously.

One of the reasons why? Unlike the people of Cheran or many private citizen
defense groups, these cartels are typically colluding with the same
politicians that claim armed vigilante activity as dangerous. The cartels also
have their own similar reasons for disliking armed civilians who tend to
retake peace from corrupt gangsters and politicians.

------
pjc50
Radical, indigenous, feminist, anti-colonial, self-organising. I think that's
the real lesson, that almost all the problems were brought in from outside by
exploiters and that the armed decolonization of the town was the real
liberation.

It's not an ideal situation: you can't have a zero party state, that always
turns into a one party state. The actual situation of control will turn out to
be a set of family relationships embedded in the matriarchy running the town,
but analysing this will be impossible for journalists. It's also why it's very
difficult to replicate.

~~~
asdkjh345fd
>Radical, indigenous, feminist, anti-colonial, self-organising.

According to the BBC's laughable propaganda. Not according to any of the
people actually involved. Even then there's nothing colonial about Mexican
cartels stealing from Mexicans.

>The actual situation of control will turn out to be a set of family
relationships embedded in the matriarchy running the town

What a bizarre notion. Why and how would that suddenly occur?

~~~
pjc50
Oh, the wording is all mine, inferred from this fairly thin set of news
reports. But:

\- radical: doesn't get much more radical than an armed uprising

\- indigenous: they're Purepecha. This is very important. While they're
Mexican _nationals_ , and would be called Mexican by Americans, they're not of
Spanish descent. They're descendents of a tribe unconquered by the Aztecs.
Racial discrimination against people of indigenous descent is common all over
Latin America.

\- feminist: all the news coverage points out that the initial uprising was
initiated by women.

\- anti-colonial: outsiders of a different ethnic background coming onto
traditional tribal land to steal natural resources? With the collusion of the
police? Sounds pretty colonial to me.

\- self-organising: found a bit more on this;
[https://elenemigocomun.net/2018/08/cheran-names-
government/](https://elenemigocomun.net/2018/08/cheran-names-government/) ;
[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/after-long-fight-self-
go...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/after-long-fight-self-government-
indigenous-town-cher-n-mexico-n906171)

It's crucial to being exempted from normal politics such as elections.
"arguing before the courts that there were provisions in Mexican law that
permit indigenous communities a form of self-government based on their
customs"; sounds analogous to the semi-autonomy of Indian reservations in the
US.

>> "set of family relationships embedded in the matriarchy running the town"

So it looks like I overstated this a lot, but if you refer to the NBCnews
article above it's a "council of elders". And they don't have parties? Family
is a party you're born into. It's more or less the default arrangement of pre-
bureaucratic politics. It's hard to avoid even in modern states. Add up all
someone's in-laws and second cousins and it's easy to get to hundreds of
people, which goes a long way in a community of 20,000.

BBC: "Most people who live in Cheran are from the town. Social mores dictate
that locals marry locals - there are very few outsiders here. Families are
large, and they are close. Everyone knows everyone else. And that is the
foundation of the town's unity."

NBC: "Patricia Hernández, a taco vendor and mother of four, accepted the
challenge to be part of their government when her neighbors chose her to
represent their fogata. She is now one of four women who will govern Cherán
for the next three years as part of the twelve-person council known as K'eri
Jánaskakua.

"Before the government didn't take us [women] into account, until we were the
ones who started this new government seven years ago," said Hernández to NBC
News. "We said 'Ya Basta!', (Enough!) to put an end to this violence."

(more feminism! with machetes!)

It doesn't "suddenly occur", it was always there, it just took a lot of
adversity to mobilize it to the level of armed self-government.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
>doesn't get much more radical than an armed uprising

I would like to nitpick that the idea that there exists a threshold of
terribleness for local power structures beyond which it's perfectly reasonable
to use or threaten violence against the people propping them up is one held by
a heck of a lot of people on the North American continent. Of course people
disagree about where to draw the line but the concept itself is pretty
mainstream.

Edit: I guess I'm really nitpicking that "radical" implies something novel,
new or fringe which does not fit the circumstances here.

~~~
pjc50
Surely the local power structure is mainstream by definition? "Radical"
doesn't imply "novel", but it does imply a much greater belief that the ends
justify the means, and an opposition to the status quo. Radical is a modality
of politics. Description of something as radical is not necessarily an
endorsement or censure.

The American revolutionaries were radicals. The protesters with guns demanding
that Kentucky reopen its shops are radicals. The Unabomber was a radical.
Nelson Mandela was a radical.

(There's a much longer point to be made about how armed revolution is an event
and the subsequent politics is a process, and that lots of places fall over
when it comes to the long haul of building a working politics after the
revolution. I'm glad this community seems to have avoided that.)

------
jrochkind1
Anyone have an update of what has happened since 2016?

~~~
int_19h
[https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2019-10-07/mushrooms-
cher...](https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2019-10-07/mushrooms-cheran-
mexico-indigenous-revolution)

~~~
jrochkind1
Damn, this is the kind of inspiring story I need right now, thanks.

------
baybal2
From my experience growing up in Russia, I can say that no organised crime can
exist without somebody providing them legal cover.

Think this way: even a single caught gang member can spill the beans on the
whole group. Eventually, as the gang grows, it happens.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I always thought organized crime works in such a way that, at any given layer,
a person could only provide evidence of criminal activity of their peers at
the same layer, and maybe a bit of dirt on their bosses a layer above - but
they couldn't bring enough legally admissible evidence to impact the higher
layers. So if a random bottom-tier gangster starts to testify, everyone above
them on the ladder just denies knowing them (and each other). The legal system
can't proceed, and meanwhile someone from the gangster's family suffers a
fatal "accident".

~~~
baybal2
> _legally admissible_ evidence to impact the higher layers.

This does not prevent the police from getting on their tail, putting them
under intense surveillance, and effectively neutralising them.

~~~
TeMPOraL
If a single testimony could cause everyone mentioned in it to be subject to
intense government scrutiny, then society would stop working because griefers
would abuse it.

~~~
pjc50
Ah, you've heard of swatting and the Church commission.

(The secret is that police have a huge "bayesian" filter for who they consider
likely to be a criminal, so little or nothing can trigger intense scrutiny for
some people whereas blatant criminality by "respectable" people is ignored)

------
restalis
This reminds me of "Cartel Land" movie¹, which depicted similar events (in the
same Mexican state of Michoacán, BTW) a few years before, mostly around José
Manuel Mireles Valverde².

¹
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4126304/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4126304/)

²
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Manuel_Mireles_Valve...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Manuel_Mireles_Valverde)

------
pnako
... with guns. Just sayin'

~~~
_bxg1
Last I checked the United States isn't an anarchy with roving bands of
unopposed, murderous gangs.

~~~
pnako
Well, it depends who you ask. My original post is slightly provocative, I
admit, but I think there is a real debate regarding this issue.

To me, it seems to validate the need for citizens to be well armed, preferably
before it's too late.

~~~
welder
They weren't armed. They only had machetes, "In those early days, we didn't
know anything about using guns." I grew up with tons of guns, you don't have
guns and at the same time know nothing about them. Had they guns they would
have used em instead of shooting fireworks at the gangsters.

~~~
pnako
Sure, and that kind of confirms my point, doesn't it?

~~~
welder
What? Are you trolling?

------
Nevada-Smith
May as well throw out the lawyers too.

~~~
justnotworthit
according to the latimes article they essentially did, punishing and making up
law as they go.

------
anigbrowl
Expect to see this model spread in the years to come. It has a lot of
potential, though I'm not sure it's easily adaptable to non-agrarian
economies.

