CHERÁN,
Mexico, Jun 29, 2011 (IPS) - "Our patience has run out," says Mary, an
indigenous woman with three children to care for on her own, since her husband
was kidnapped from his home by an armed group. In this town in western Mexico,
local residents have begun to defend themselves with sticks and stones against
illegal loggers and organised crime groups that are their
allies.
"It's very sad, because my husband was a really fine, upright
person. He was a member of the communal lands committee, and when the problems
with the 'talamontes' (gangs of illegal loggers) began, he informed the
authorities, but no one paid any attention, and now they've taken him away,"
Mary told IPS about her husband's Feb. 10 kidnapping.
She displayed an
embroidery she had made, depicting a woman of her ethnic group, the Purépecha
people, and a legend reading: "Wife of 1 kidnapped person. Wife of 1 disappeared
person. The struggle continues." She has embroidered four dozen of these
placemats, which she planned to sell to support her family, but she has ended up
giving them all away.
"I don't believe (the state and federal
governments) can help us. I don't know who to turn to for help. That's why we've
run out of patience, and are fed up with waiting for someone to come to our aid,
and now the local people are determined to do what we think is best," Mary said.
Her husband Rafael García is one of six indigenous people who were
forcibly disappeared in the last three years in Cherán, in the state of
Michoacán, which has one of the highest levels of violence in Mexico, and is the
operating area for the La Familia drug cartel.
A further 12 indigenous
people have been murdered due to confrontations with the "talamontes" who are in
cahoots with organised crime groups. Local and state authorities have turned a
blind eye or have actively protected the criminals.
IPS came to Cherán
with part of the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity headed by poet
Javier Sicilia, although Sicilia was not present during the visit.
The
contingent of four trucks and half a dozen smaller vehicles arrived on Sunday
Jun 26, bringing food supplies to the community, and was greeted by the
townspeople with celebrations involving traditional local music, dancing and
dishes.
"For three years we have tried to solve the problems with words;
then we made great efforts to stop the trucks by digging ditches in the roads,
but they still didn't get the message. The politicians responded with the kind
of words that only deceive and destroy," said Salvador Campanú, who on Jun. 23
represented Cherán in a dialogue between victims of violence and President
Felipe Calderón.
Local residents explain that San José mountain was
denuded by the "talamontes" starting in 2008, and when there were no trees left
in that area they began to deforest La Cofradía mountain as well. But the people
of Cherán put up resistance, and that was when the murders, kidnappings and
extortion began.
The townspeople rose up Apr. 15 armed with cudgels,
stones and "coetones" (homemade rocket fireworks) to oust the armed men. They
put up barricades at the roads leading into the town, but 10 days later they had
run out of food and asked the national government to send in the security
forces.
However, the soldiers and federal forces merely overflew this
town of 13,000 people and took up positions on the outskirts. Since then, only
civil society organisations and religious groups have entered the conflict zone,
bringing food supplies.
Today Cherán is a town that is seeking
self-government.
The local people's assembly, which has taken over the
mayor's functions, has already sent word to the electoral authorities that no
party-based elections will be held here in November, as they will elect their
own authorities.
Schools are closed, but community teachers have
organised extramural classes. In the absence of a local ombudsman (there is one,
but he does not practice) they formed an "honour and justice council".
However, their top priority is security. They have built 200 barricades
around the town and established the "community watch," which carries out
street-by-street vigilance in the four zones into which the town is divided.
The community watch is a grassroots autonomous defence mechanism to
protect the town and local lands against the criminal gangs.
The watch
participants are mainly young men, carrying only cudgels and stones as weapons,
who wander the streets at all hours, bandannas covering their faces below the
eyes, with homemade identification cards dangling from their necks reading
"community watch."
"Fear and the instinct for self-preservation are
stronger than the desire to roam beyond Cherán," one of these community
policemen says. His face is hidden behind his bandanna and he wishes to remain
anonymous for security reasons. "I haven't been outside the town for two months,
because I don't want to leave my family alone here," he added.
According
to the townspeople, criminal organisations charge the "talamontes" fees for the
armed protection they provide to ensure the loggers can fell timber illegally,
extort businesses, kidnap and rob at will.
People in Cherán interviewed
by IPS accuse the leader of a La Familia group that operates in Purépecha,
Cuitláhuac Hernández from the village of Rancho Seco, of being responsible for
the depredation of their land.
But they added that the chief person to
blame for the overall situation is Mayor Roberto Bautista Chapina, of the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), because he allows the illegal gangs to
operate freely in the region.
One of those who holds this view is
Zenaida Vázquez, whose husband Domingo Chávez disappeared May 28. His body was
found Jun. 9 on Tecolote hill, with his feet and face scorched.
The
mayor told Vázquez that he had most probably died accidentally in a fire,
although a post-mortem examination in Celaya found a bullet wound in his body.
The community watch policeman who spoke to IPS was the person who found
Chávez's remains. "It was horrible seeing how he had been hurt," he said. "I
don't know the name of the ombudsman or of the mayor, but what I do know is that
things here have got very ugly, and although I have never been mixed up in these
matters, now I have to get involved in order to defend my family."
Security may be seen as men's business, but women have helped bring
people together in their anger.
"We are present at the campfires,
keeping watch and preparing food. We all know that three rockets and a flare are
the signal to bring us all out onto the streets," said Marcelina, preparing
tortillas at a barricade.
"We are rather fearful because of our
children. But what else can we do, when they are destroying our forests and
kidnapping our men?"
The people of Cherán are holding out in the
trenches, hoping for no more deaths or disappearances. They are looking for
their own solutions, such as that of Adalberto Muñoz and his wife Rosalinda, who
built a small greenhouse in their back yard where they have dozens of fir trees
ready for transplanting.
"We collected rainwater when the troubles
began, in order to have water, because the mayor cut off our electricity. But we
have to keep going, because it's our land and our survival that are at stake. We
aren't going to wait for the authorities any longer," said Rosalinda.
(END)