It is Sunday morning in the main square of the indigenous town of Cherán, Mexico where the ringing of church bells clash with music from the youth community radio station. Election day has come to the Mexican state of Michoacán, but here in Cherán nobody is voting.
For the last three years this community of around 11,000 people has been caught up in Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s war on drugs. As gangs of illegal loggers backed by the local drug cartel and aided by local politicians encroached further onto the community’s land, with them came threats, abduction and murder.
Since April, the town has been sealed off in a bid to protect its future. Local and federal authorities are not welcome, politicians even less so. Barricades at the entrance to the town are manned 24-hours a day and members of the community keep vigil around fires in the street.
With local government no longer in charge, the town is now run by commissions, covering all aspects of town life from security to education, made up of around 60 local residents. What is missing, and what the people of Cherán now want, is to elect their own town representatives in line with indigenous tradition.
Mr. Ramírez, one of those running the Commission for Security, explains that elected residents will now do the work once done by politicians, but with one major difference, they will not represent any political party.
Protesters holding a sign “Our dreams do not fit into your urns.” Photo by Nicolas Tavira.In boycotting the regional elections, the people of Cherán are making a statement against local politics. Sitting at his desk surround by papers, Father Antonio Mora, one of the town’s priests, knows only too well the trouble traditional politics can bring. He moved to the community three years ago and found the town deeply divided along political lines. He explains that as political divisions worsened, organized crime took advantage of the split to drive a further wedge between members of the community.
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