by Kristin Bricker
This article first appeared at Upside Down World.
Armed with machetes, sticks, and farm tools, residents of Cherán, Michoacan, covered their faces with bandanas and set up barricades around their community on April 15. It is a scene reminiscent of Oaxaca in 2006, except this time, the barricades aren’t meant to keep out paramilitary death squads; they keep out organized crime.
The barricades have come at a cost for the town’s 12,600 residents. Schools have been shut down since Easter, and the economy has come to a standstill. However, without the barricades, kidnappers and illegal loggers who are in league with organized crime would continue to prey upon the town with complete impunity. For Cherán’s residents, unabated impunity is unacceptable, because in addition to the usual laundry list of drug war crimes–murder, kidnapping, extortion, and torture–the illegal loggers, protected by organized crime, have destroyed an estimated 80% of Cherán’s woodlands.
When the municipal, state, and federal governments refused to protect Cherán from organized crime, the community took matters into its own hands. Now, not only are they driving organized crime out of they’re community, they’re also kicking out the political parties, whom they blame for allowing insecurity and crime in Cherán to spiral out of control.
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