Cheran: A town that threw out police, politicians and gangsters

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37612083?utm_content=buffer3736b

by kawera • 10 years ago

123 97 10 years ago

yumaikas• 10 years ago

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.

phantom_oracle• 10 years ago

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).

umanwizard• 10 years ago

working 80 hours per week

Why would you do that, in America? (Assuming you're a software engineer or other white-collar job). Are you in game programming or something?

rdtsc3• 10 years ago

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.

nickff• 10 years ago

I think you are right, and that we should not romanticize poverty. Many people view a 'simple life' as being one of purity and virtue, but there are very good reasons for why so many poor farmers want to move to the city.

shitgoose5• 10 years ago

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.

mc32• 10 years ago

You hit the nail on the head. Anthony can feel all romantic about because the second he has cold feet about it, he can jilt the his experiment in subsistence farming. That farmer has no hope, no way of parachuting out of there -as you say, the are trapped.

babyrainbow• 10 years ago

The best way, like always, is to find a middle ground. Work part of your time doing physical labour in soil, farming or rearing animals, and part of your time doing creative/intellectual work. Because both mind and body needs to work on things they are supposed to.

But finding that middle ground for themselves requires every man thinking for himself, which is kind of frowned upon in modern societies....

mseebach• 10 years ago

Steve Horwich has coined the phrase "rich enough to play at being poor". I think it very nicely captures both the dynamic of romanticising poverty (sorry, "simple, happy living") and the dubious ethics of doing so.

http://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/the-calling-in-de...

nugget• 10 years ago

Money is simply a means to an end. If you don't know what that end is, it's easy to feel restless, directionless and miserable. ''He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.''

crdb• 10 years ago

I worked for a few months in Maharashtra with an Indian FMCG/white goods manufacturer. We were trying to develop products for the "bottom of the pyramid" market - think families living in one room on $30-100 a month.

Every youth in the villages was trying to get to the cities. Their parents often couldn't read or even speak Hindi (let alone English), only their local dialect. So the kids were the ones getting the information for parents (like the price of goods in shops), sometimes translating, etc. as they were the first generation to be able to do so.

With a bit of schooling, they could get a factory or even a white collar job and happily left behind their subsistence living.

I think the "happiness" part was summed up with an interview my team had with a local woman. More than half her family, husband and all siblings included, were dead, usually before the age of 30, from causes ranging from disease to snakes to crossing the road without hearing the car.

Now I speak neither Hindi nor Marathi or whatever the local dialect was, and even connecting with and understanding my middle class Indian colleagues was difficult so maybe I saw what I wanted to see. Nevertheless I got the impression that the way people cope with such a harsh life is through a form of shell shock. They withdraw and just get on with surviving. I looked at the folks living next to their swimming pool sized field from which their entire life depended. I had a tough time seeing happiness. Nature, like the universe, is a cold and harsh place that doesn't care about you. The worst part is perhaps the lack of hope, of direction: tomorrow will always be like today, until the snake, disease or car gets you. At least the children have a bit of hope now, and through them the parents.

I left with renewed appreciation for what we have. Even today, I remember the intense happiness from seeing the smooth, clean tarmac at LHR. It surprised me somewhat how Brits could be so grumpy when they have it so good...

I'll leave the story about Tibetan yak farmers playing Android games whilst herding the beasts on horseback for another day.

agnivade• 10 years ago

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

That's all that matters to me. True happiness. Do whatever gives you true happiness. If you are happy overworking yourself to get that promotion, that's totally fine. Or if you are happy working at a low paying cash counter job at a supermall, that is okay too.

I think a major factor in this is not to get lost in the endless cycle of continuously trying to gratify yourself by siphoning off from what society offers you. This just leads you into a bottomless rabbit hole which forces you to be "unhappy" until you have that "new cool thing".

I have quit my old job. Joined a couple of friends at a startup, doing consultancy work. Nothing fancy. But we get along just fine. Cut myself off from facebook. Work from home, work out, contribute to open source. Couldn't be happier than what I am now.

lr• 10 years ago

Just look at the Amish and Mennonites, and you will see people who are happy, subsist, and even prosper, by leading a life that requires little to no modern ameneties.

gaius2• 10 years ago

Not remotely comparable - an Amish need never worry about a warlord coming to steal his crops or his livestock or his daughters because the full might of the US govt protects his community.

nradov• 10 years ago

You have no idea what it's actually like. Go live in one of those places for a few months and then tell us how happy the people are.

shitgoose5• 10 years ago

Well, let them bring back police, gangsters and politicians. I am sure that will make things so much more fun.

d0mine• 10 years ago

You might like "Story of the Mexican Fisherman" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=139090

ekianjo• 10 years ago

The happiness of the countryside folks is a recurring myth in History. You can even see if in Antiquity with the scribes class writing about how peasants have a simple and happy life. The truth is much more nuanced and living on the land is harsh and hard work. Only the ones who never experienced it have an idyllic vision of it.

boards2x• 10 years ago

Same goes to many parts of the USA. Many of these populations are probably Drumpf voters. Many never had a passport issue and believe the US is the "greatest nation on earth". Many don't speak a second language, not sure exactly where the countries their own country invaded are located, or even which people they've destroyed and exterminated when Europeans first invaded North America.

jrochkind13• 10 years ago

I wouldn't romantisize poverty, but the people in this story would be poor whether or not they had kicked out the gangs and politicians. They're certainly happier now that they have.

HillaryBriss4• 10 years ago

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.

eyelidlessness• 10 years ago

Checkpoints are routine in the US, in quite a lot of places but particularly near (not just on) the border. Many of the latter racially profile, directing a lot more scrutiny at non-white travelers.

FullMtlAlcoholc3• 10 years ago

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.

Its completely consistent. Ever hear of stop and frisk?

gruez• 10 years ago

...which was declared unconstitutional

redial12• 10 years ago

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.

HillaryBriss4• 10 years ago

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.

inimino• 10 years ago

It is consistent with self-government, which is what the article describes. It's more like a tiny city-state than an ordinary town.

jrochkind13• 10 years ago

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.

Not much?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol_in...

HillaryBriss4• 10 years ago

You're linking to an article about the US Federal Government, not a city/county/region government. It's not a counter example.

grecy• 10 years ago

I was stopped at exactly this kind of Checkpoint in Arizona recently, and up in Northern New York a while back.

Don't kid yourself into thinking you have unrestricted travel in the United States.

adrianratnapala• 10 years ago

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?

Steeeve2• 10 years ago

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

What an insightful thing to do.

gaius2• 10 years ago

Indeed, the North Koreans are proof!

Steeeve2• 10 years ago

NK actually has 4 political parties and independants.

exabrial• 10 years ago

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

jrochkind13• 10 years ago

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.

code_sardaukar• 10 years ago

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.

cel1ne• 10 years ago

Thanks for the comment, I had exactly the same thought.

drieddust3• 10 years ago

In few years time, we will read about Cheran mafia's ascend to power. These utopian dreams almost always result in oppressed becoming oppressors. This quote sums it up quite nicely.

“But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions.” ― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

redial12• 10 years ago

Western democracy is the result of the French and American Revolutions.

yarou• 10 years ago

Can you point to an example of a Western democracy today?

Noseshine• 10 years ago

Even when every single person complains, the result of democracy is not to make each and every person happy.

Case in point: You can change things, even radically, in the western democracies. All it takes is to create a new party (the law and the constitutions place only very broad limits) - the you can get elected.

The point that new parties have not actually been elected is not a sign that democracy doesn't work, it is a sign that people in summary don't actually think any of them would be an improvement.

Just because you don't like some of the outcome doesn't mean it's not a democracy.

saiya-jin2• 10 years ago

Switzerland, 800 years and kickin' high

redial12• 10 years ago

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.

foota2• 10 years ago

Many? Examples?

restalis3• 10 years ago

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.

walshemj• 10 years ago

Nearer 1400+ years

Razengan• 10 years ago

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

How "long" has "Western democracy" been around for?

In any case, I don't think it matters which -cracy/-archy/-ism it is. What ulitimately works is that the people be allowed to do what they want to do. ...within universal moral standards (:Murder is Bad.)

As long as people are allowed to buy what they want, watch, read and play what they want, build what they want, go where they want, work where they want — if they have enough money — and say what they want and have relationships with whomever they want, then on the whole they will be complacent if not content or happy. They won't care what type of government it is or who is running it.

Take a contemporary issue for example. Do you think you can even vote out the NSA and dismantle all domestic surveillance mechanisms at this point in America? But the majority of people don't care because they're more or less content.

I reside in a third-world country that isn't exactly a bastion of Western Democracy, yet the people here more-or-less live their daily lives out as one might in a Western country, so they don't really pay their government much mind.

In the end, what works is consumerism.

dghf• 10 years ago

most collapsed due to internal problems not being crushed by the nation state

Weren't the Spanish anarchists betrayed by their Republican and Stalinist allies?

amelius• 10 years ago

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

Western democracy works?

dredmorbius2• 10 years ago

Arguably it does, though that depends strongly on what you accept its intended results to be.

carapace• 10 years ago

But I don't think these folks are "leftists"?

"its autonomy as an indigenous Purepecha community is recognised and underwritten by the Mexican government."

My guess would be that this is a whole culture.

epitomix• 10 years ago

I think you are missing the bigger picture. This is a story of a town dealing with the problems that arise in a failed state. The Mexican state and federal governments have failed to provide the basic services that they are responsible for, most importantly security.

dharma1• 10 years ago

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

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel_Land

finid• 10 years ago

"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.

mkstowegnv• 10 years ago

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.)

Cheran: A town that threw out police, politicians and gangsters

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