The Municipality of Cherán is one of the 113 municipalities in which the Mexican state of Michoacán de Ocampo is divided, it is considered one of the main municipalities inhabited by Purépecha communities and its head is the town of Cherán. In 2011, a group of around 10 women from the P'urhépecha municipality stopped one of the hundreds of trucks that daily transported stolen wood from the community's forests, thus initiating a resistance that had as its central axis the defense of the forests and the right to live according to the uses and customs of the community.
This prompted people to take up arms against the municipal government, carrying out a rebellion, the mayor who was dismissed and fled, as a result of which Cheran reorganized as an autonomous place, ruled by a direct democracy, a council of 12 Purepecha leaders who do not know the federal government and since 2011 the community governs itself.