For a map, click here. For a map of Michoacan state, click here. To read the last Rantburg.com report on the conflict in Cheran, Michoacan, click here.
By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
Two villagers from Cheran municipality were kidnapped Sunday as an ongoing conflict in a remote mountain municipality in Michoacan state has heated up again, according to Mexican news accounts.
A news report posted on the website of El Sol de Zacatecas news daily said that Urbano Macias Rafael, 48, and Guadalupe Geronimo Velazquez, 28, had gone to a location north of the plains of Carichero to retrieve cattle when masked armed suspects abducted them.
A telephone call was received by family members that day from individuals claiming to be from El Cerecito claiming responsibility for the abduction.
According to the article, a member of the Cheran municipal council said the reaction of villagers in Cheran was immediate. Trinidad NinÃs Pahuamba claimed she and other Cheran municipal officials have been holed up in the town hall, the building cordoned off by local villagers and family members of the kidnap victims, who are refusing to allow them to leave. Michoacan state governor's office and the Michoacan state Secretaria de Gobierno (SEGOB) had been contacted, but no response has yet been received.
Villages in Cheran have fought a variously hot-cold conflict, the issues of which surround charges of illegal logging by the villagers of El Cerecito and a nexus with organized crime, and accusations of criminal conduct by Cheran villagers including illegal road tolls, car theft, carjacking, kidnapping and petty theft.
Last April the conflict went hot as a total of eight individuals were killed, six from El Cerecito and two from Cheran. The state government of Michoacan has intervened several times in the last six months to bring resolution to some of the conflicts.
Both communities are remote mountain indigenous Indian communities. A federal presence exists in the area in the form of Policia Federal road patrols.
Michoacan state is one of the most heavily fortified states in Mexico with a total of 8,000 Mexican Army troops deployed in the state since March, 2012.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com