As Mexico goes to the polls, residents of indigenous enclaves go their own way
CHERÁN,MEXICO: As Mexicans prepare to cast their ballots Sunday, the people of Nahuatzen, an indigenous village tucked into the country’s western mountains, are busy blocking the street with bonfires to keep out electoral authorities.
Similar scenes have played out in several states across the country -- a rejection of a system that indigenous Mexicans say only serves to pick the next batch of corrupt politicians who will plunder their communities.
The indigenous Purepecha people of Nahuatzen sip coffee as they warm themselves by the large bonfires, standing guard against any attempt by the National Electoral Institute to set up a polling station in the village.
“We’re ready for them if they come,” said one man on night watch, after the Michoacan state government announced it would launch a military and police operation to guarantee the vote statewide, by force if necessary.
Thousands of indigenous Mexicans have blocked highways and protested against the elections in recent weeks, angry over corruption, drug cartel violence and the pillaging of their ancestral lands.
Their inspiration is the village of Cheran, a Purepecha community in Michoacan that made history by suing for the right abolish elections and set up its own system of government, complete with its own police force.
They took their case all the way to the Supreme Court, and won in 2011 -- essentially becoming a tiny state within a state.
Instead of a mayor and city council, Cheran now has an Assembly that includes the entire community, and 12 representatives who form a so-called Great Communal Council -- chosen without campaigns, parties or ballot boxes.
Cheran brought the lawsuit after the chronically corrupt Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) -- Mexico’s current ruling party -- won the elections to govern the municipality where the village is located in 2008.
As happens all too often in Mexico, the new mayor, Roberto Bautista, proceeded to fill his government with cronies and strike a dirty deal with a local mafia -- in this case, illegal loggers armed with machine guns who sowed terror in Cheran.
“There were daily shootouts, right in the middle of the street,” recalled Irma Campos, a retired teacher.
The first ones to rise up were village women. Offended by the destruction of their forest, they started a movement that ultimately led the village to banish all politicians, disband the police, launch a new community police force, and reforest more than 8,000 pillaged hectares (20,000 acres).