Since the 1970s land conflicts have intensified in Mexico largely due to the development of "agrarian capitalism" in which landowners developed manufacturing and became small businessmen (Castile, 1974). 

In Cherán, this developmentalist stage was marked by agrarian power groups that, with clientelist practices at the local and state level, profited from the forest through the control of the communal property commissariat (Calderón Mólgora, 2004).

In addition, poorly established boundaries and land invasion and land grabbing by private landowners led to other community conflicts.

During the last half of the 20th century, other factors that led to the increase of natural resource dispossession were the intensification of migration to the USA and the consequent abandonment of the countryside, as well as the advance of violence fostered by organized crime groups in different regions of Michoacán, which, among other actions, have intervened in the intensification of avocado monoculture (Gasparello, 2018; Pérez-Llorente, et., al., 2019). 

Between 2008 and 2011, avocado plantations and clandestine logging in Cherán affected approximately 9,000 hectares of forests (España-Boquera and Champo-Jiménez, 2016; Osorno, et. al., 2018).

The loggers and the territorial advance of organized crime impacted the forests near the spring of La Cofradía, a place of high environmental and cultural value for the villagers, which triggered the uprising of April 15, 2011. For this reason, the conflict can be considered socio-environmental. 

Most studies concerned with the development of the autonomous movement in Cherán point to the root causes of the democratic crisis in Mexico, its alienation of indigenous peoples and the resulting need for political alternatives.

The Cherán insurgency was greatly influenced by the unfair Mexican social and political system, which excludes, marginalizes, and discriminates against subaltern groups, primarily indigenous communities (Aragón, 2016).

The Mexican construction of ‘citizenship’ – agreed upon during the 19th century by a white elite – excluded indigenous collectivities and denied their rights to self-determination (Nelson, 2007). 

Cherán’s mobilization was thus to an attempt to disrupt hegemonic discourses of citizenship and democracy in Mexico.

Historically the region of the P'urhépecha plateau has remained relatively well organized.

Since the arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century after the process of conquest and the long night of the colony, the different towns of the region (today known as Santa Fe de la Laguna, Pátzcuaro, Tzintzuntzan, Cucuchucho, Janitzio, Carapan, Tacuro, Huancito, Sopoco, Santo Tomás, Tanaquillo, Uren, Chilchota, Etucuaro, Cherán, Ichan, Acachuen, Terecuato, Terejero and Nurío) have fought to preserve their community organization based on indigenous traditions of social and economic organization.

Since the early 2000s, organized criminal syndicates, like the drug cartel La Familia, created in Michoacán, had acted like a state within a state, making their own rules and meting out grisly punishments to those who did not obey their commands.

Historically, forest resources and their derivatives have been the basic pillar of the livelihoods of the people of Cherán.

The defense of the forest was the arena in which the first events of Cherán's history of insurrection were unleashed –– in the context of insecurity and political instability derived from the policies of the fight against organized crime undertaken in 2006.

While for years Cherán had suffered from the illegal exploitation of its forest resources by small-scale loggers, it was not until the emergence of a new player that the outlook for the Cherán people changed radically (Ventura, 2012): Gangs of talamontes linked to organized crime groups broke into the municipality and employed violent tactics of intimidation to plunder Cherán's forests within a few years.

It is estimated that in six years a total of 9069.35 hectares of forest were lost, which represents an average of 1500 hectares per year. This corresponds to a loss of 71.24% of the 12,730.48 hectares of forest that Cherán had in 2006. Most of the deforestation occurred between 2010 and 2011 (2815 hectares) and was concentrated in the area closest to the urban core (Spain and Champo, 2016).

Increasing social violence and environmental exploitation were legitimized by the corruption of both municipal and state authorities.

Government officials allied themselves with opponents of the movement and ignored facts such as the murder and forced disappearance of some community members.

This was compounded by divisions between supporters of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and those of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which deepened during the last electoral process in the municipality (2007).