From El Enemigo Comun - by Simòn Sedillo
On December 11, 2012, the US Justice Department announced that banking giant HSBC was immune from prosecution despite overwhelming evidence that they consistently failed to implement controls against money-laundering. Assistant attorney general Lanny Breuer said: “Had the US authorities decided to press criminal charges, HSBC would almost certainly have lost its banking license in the US, the future of the institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system would have been destabilized.”
The entire banking system would have been destabilized?
The Department of Justice opted rather to charge HSBC a record-breaking 1.9 billion dollar fine, and ordered the bank’s activities monitored for five years. The 1.9 billion is equivalent to five weeks’ worth of HSBC earnings, in other words, a drop in the bucket. The saddest part of the story in the mainstream media, is the focus on money laundered and money fined, as opposed to lives lost and crime legitimized in one of the most grotesque admissions of complicity with organized crime in the so-called war on drugs. Basically what was announced to the world by the US Justice Department was that the money ran too thick, and the criminals were too powerful. The global economic impact of prosecuting a bank where the dirty money has been going, was too dangerous to risk. “Sorry kids, but we guess the bad guys win.”
In Cheran, Michoacan, Mexico the news of HSBC’s immunity from criminal prosecution and US sanctions comes as no surprise. Organized crime has been prevalent in the community since 2000. After a 2008 mayoral race that left a PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) candidate in office, illicit activity increased substantially. The community learned that organized crime is an integral part of local politics and economics everywhere. Cheran is a beautiful small indigenous Purepecha mountain community surrounded by precious forests, that knows the true cost of those profits laundered. Immediately after the 2008 mayoral race the community began experiencing the devastating effects of dog eat dog capitalism of which organized crime is only another part.
The illegal logging industry began to ravage the community’s most precious forests, which have been traditionally respected as a spiritual connection by the Indigenous Purepecha people to their territory. The logging began to look a lot more like pillaging and when community members began to attempt to defend their forests, they were met with a real life nightmare: the loggers were not only aided and protected by government agencies and local police, the entire logging operation was being coordinated by members of a major organized crime syndicate. [To this day I am told by community members not to name the actual syndicate in anything I write or say, or risk an almost certain death.]
The first community members who began to defend their forest were simply and quickly assassinated. From 2008-2011 the situation only became worse. Criminals charged protection to run even a small business in the community of Cheran. The forest was raped and terror reigned as anyone felt at risk. The city would become a ghost town by sunset. This is a reality confronted by too many communities in Mexico every day.
Murders, disappearances, kidnappings, the criminal amounts of illegal logging and the reign of terror came to a head on the early morning of April 15th, 2011. A group of women had begun quietly organizing in the days before an action to bring the ravaging of their town to a halt. On April 15th, with children and youth at their sides, the women rose up and attempted to detain loggers traveling through town. The loggers tried to run the women over and in response the community reacted as a whole, and began burning the loggers’ vehicles and began detaining the loggers themselves.
It is at this point that the community recognized the complicity of the local police when it was police officers who guided organized crime thugs to the place where the loggers were being held, in an attempt to violently release them. The community erected “fogatas” or bonfire barricades throughout town in order to prevent violence against community members. Within days the community decided that it no longer trusted any politicians from any political party or any of the local and state police. They began to organize for self-determination and self-defense and chose to return to their traditional Purepecha forms of self governance.
A general council of community elders was elected and commissions were formed in order to carry out the community’s logistical, social, economic, and political needs. Community members simply say that they referred to their history and referred to their elders in order to return to the way the community was organized before political parties, police, and organized crime existed. The general council is legally recognized as the governing body of Cheran, Michoacan today.
The community has maintained that they only have three demands: safety, justice, and the reforestation of their territory. They have actively been reforesting the entire region and take that aspect of their struggle very seriously, and remind us that for them protecting the forest is both a traditional and a spiritual obligation. Cheran does not believe that anybody will ever be able to bring them justice for their dead, disappeared, and displaced as a result of the conflict, nor do they expect anyone in power to understand the justice they seek for the forest. Today Cheran knows that justice is something that they will have to take care of obtaining on their own from now on. When it comes to safety, the world is able to see what it looks like for a community to take responsibility for its own safety through traditional indigenous forms of self governance and self-defense.
Shortly after the 2011 uprising began, community members state that the local politicians and the police simply exiled themselves in fear from the community, warranting no need to run them out of town. Community members took the local government offices, took police trucks, took the polices’ weapons, and put them all to use. Historically, Cheran had traditionally been “policed” or defended by members from the community. In a voluntary rotation members from each of the four “barrios” or neighborhoods would patrol the community for self-defense in what is known as the “community ronda.” After the uprising the general council made a call out for volunteers to participate in the community “ronda”, or community guard. Community members maintain that police are imposed by the government, but the “ronda” is a traditional way in which community members protect themselves and their community. Today the “ronda” is separated into two parts. The “ronda comunitaria” which is responsible for patrolling and protecting the community from within its borders and the “guardabosques” or forest defenders, which patrol the outskirts of town and deep into the forests in order to protect community members living in those more rural areas and in order to protect the forest itself.
Cheran is not the first community in Mexico to return to their traditional means of community self-defense, nor is it the first place in the state of Michoacan, nor in the indigenous Purepecha region. Other communities have engaged in similar practices of self governance and self-defense, and little by little more and more communities are seeing traditional self governance and self-defense as a viable alternative to corrupt politics and submission to organized crime. Recently council members from Nurio, Michoacan, a larger community and long time practitioner of self governance and self-defense, suggested that the entire Purepecha region should begin to organize a regional “ronda” that could potentially coordinate self-defense patrols on a regional level for the indigenous Purepecha people living throughout the state of Michoacan.
It is hard not to throw your hands up in the air in resignation when you hear about criminals such as HSBC being granted immunity from prosecution and sanctions, but it is even harder not to throw a fist in the air when you see indigenous Purepechas successfully overcoming organized crime, corrupt politicians, and big business by establishing models for self-determination and self-defense, on a community level.
(Video also be Simon Sedillo)

Comments
This interesting article
This interesting article poses more than a few potential challenges to anarchists. As with the example of the EZLN before them, some anarchists have felt that efforts at reclaiming indigenous territory and governance systems are well within the range of laudable anarchist(ic) activities, deserving of our support and solidarity, while others have felt uncomfortable with structures and terminology such as "governance systems" and "community policing." Here we have a striking example of exactly this sometimes confounding nuance. Cheran's reinstated indigenous governance council is legally recognized, we are told, and their new "ronda" community police use the same uniforms and equipment as their state predecessors. At the same time, their "governance system" is evidently highly consensus based and popular, and Cheran has been outspoken about its resistance to capitalism, all political parties, and forest destruction (indeed, the ronda patrols might even call to mind some sort of ELF militia). Do these forms constitute "compromises" either in a negative or positive sense? Should anarchists maintain a critical distance or consider adopting these strategies/structures ourselves?
-original poster
Personally when considering
Personally when considering things like this, i d encourage folks to look past symbols and uniforms and to the content of what is happening. If these patrols are made up of rotating groups of non professionals, everyday folks, etc., that not only represents a drastic break with the State form of "policing" (and the myriad structural and psychological ways in which people "become" police), but it also represents to me a marked similarity with specifically anarchist projects in other parts of the world and other times in history, when jobs like community defense were considered necessary in times of conflict, but were shared or rotated to prevent professionalization and institutionalization. The actual role and everyday function of these rotating groups is crucial too, and this article and others ive read dont go into much detail. Its important regardless to look beyond the words ("comunity policing"...) , especially when its being translated once from a native language and then a second time to english, and look instead to the content of what's happening on the ground.
The article references a return to indigenous systems of decision-making and resource sharing - undoubtedly, though, much of this rebellion has to have been a combination of new AND old, as it a response to new conditions and a new kind of crisis, and a new kind of encroaching state form. It seems unlikely that the fogatas, the community ronda, the guardabosques, the critique of police and political parties, were intrinsic features in the indigenous life centuries before, as these things are new ways to deal with a fairly new problem. It seems more to me like the indigenous identity and background offers a cultural and spiritual anchor with which to ground a fairly anti authoritarian politics that is actually quite new and inventive. Whether or not these tactics can be identically replicated elsewhere is a different question (though many of them are....), but i certainly see no particular reason why anarchists need to maintain our distance. Our goal is not to make more "anarchists" out in the world, but to foster and support the growth of anarchy - and it seems to me our friends in Cheran are doing a pretty good job.
(On a sidenote, the issue of their structures now being legally sanctioned presents a new problem, as this was not the case before. I wish the article had gotten more into depth on the precise meaning and process of this...Is it a process of recuperation? Is this something that was sought by the community or was merely placed upon them from politicians looking to not lose face for their retreat, several hundred miles away? Many questions....)
PS. For those curious at how
PS. For those curious at how an insurrectionary practice might contribute to ecological defense, here ya go. Discuss amongst yourselves or something.
in my opinion, what
in my opinion, what autonomous communities decide to do gives us opportunity to learn for the day when we find ourselves in their position.
meanwhile, i stand with those whose trajectory is the same as mine.
"Should anarchists maintain a
"Should anarchists maintain a critical distance or consider adopting these strategies/structures ourselves?"
This is the wrong question and is worded quite poorly. By reducing the question to a binary opposition, you set up a situation of moral absolutes rather than one that accepts or offers nuance and/or contradictory positions.
Maybe anarchists can offer critical solidarity (as has happened with the EZLN) rather than merely maintaining a critical distance?
Adopting the strategies/structures that grow out of a specific (indigenous) cultural context is colonialist and should be avoided. In a setting where rotating community policing makes sense to all those who are invested in it working, it could offer a useful alternative to the imposition of a professional police force. But such a strategy would be idiotic where I live.
My apologies. I worded it
My apologies. I worded it that way so as to reflect the situation as I see it, which today essentially entails those anarchists who are whole-heartedly EZLN supporters, who find little reason to offer even constructive critiques (i count myself amongst them) and those anarchists who, for ideological reasons, are opposed to the whole EZLN project and will critique their actions on any grounds whatsoever, imagined or real. In theory I agree that a "middle ground" of supportive, constructive criticism should exist, I just haven't really encountered it yet.
Or perhaps our definitions do not see eye to eye, as I do not see the EZLN (or any organization/tendency) as perfect, so perhaps this does count?
Sorry, I didn't read the last
Sorry, I didn't read the last part of your comment well enough the first time.
I agree absolutely that settler communities should avoid appropriating specific indigenous practices (general practices like "resistance" and "autonomy" are another thing though). The question was intended to ask more generally if we should consider tactics/terminology which are not as clear-cut as the mainstream anarchist lexicon tends to be. So, for example, is it forgivable to talk about "anarchist government" rather than proclaiming simply "no government". I don't think there's anything inherently indigenous about this flexibility in language/naming, but it is something we currently mostly see indigenous communities doing. Do you agree?
No I do not agree, if what
No I do not agree, if what you are saying is that it's a question of vocabulary rather than practice.
Care to elaborate?
Care to elaborate?
If it looks like a porky pig
If it looks like a porky pig and waddles like a porky pig it probably is a cop
Forest defenders from Cheran,
Forest defenders from Cheran, Michoacan are in solidarity with the Idle No More movement from Canada.
http://elenemigocomun.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/idle-no-more-cheran...
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