TILA-CHIAPAS Photo from Pozol.org

By: Hermann Bellinghausen and Elio Henríquez, Reporter and Correspondent

The violence in Tila, Chiapas, continues to grow, and cross reports are alarming. On the one hand the ejido, declared autonomous, maintains that the march that they carried out on September 11th to remove the blockades that besieged the town was attacked by followers of the group headed by Francisco Arturo Sánchez Martínez, linked to the Paz y Justicia paramilitary group. Pedro Alejandro Jiménez Pérez lost his life due to a bullet wound in the abdomen in the clash that occurred this Friday, and Ángel Darinel Vázquez Ramírez, Medardo Pérez Jiménez and Jaime Lugo Pérez were injured.

In the group that follows Sánchez Martínez, Elmar Martínez Pérez and Juan Pablo Pérez Vázquez died as a result of bullet wounds, and Carlos Daniel Parcero Gutiérrez, Fredy Pérez Ramírez, Mateo Pérez Álvarez and Isaías López Gómez were injured.

For its part, the Digna Ochoa Human Rights Committee made a serious denunciation today, after the appearance of two dead bodies with signs of torture, for which they blame the “autonomous,” incorrectly characterized as members of the EZLN who, as is well known, are not members of the EZLN. [They are affiliated with the CNI].

The Committee condemned “the acts of armed violence,” for which it blamed “the self-proclaimed autonomous group,” who, according to its version, had initiated the attack, and not the followers of the City Council. However, the Digna Ochoa Committee admits that this second group “is responsible for breaking down the gate at the entrance to Tila on August 25, maintaining a blockade to control access to the town,” and carrying out “previous acts of provocation with firearms, as we denounced on August 30.”

The Committee records that: “two people who the autonomous group considered as disappeared from the Sañoja annex of the Tila ejido, lamentably appeared dead today with signs of being brutally tortured alive, with signs of burns and cuts on his skin; their names were Luis Aparicio Parcero Martínez, whose face was skinned, and Elidio Zenteno Trujillo who they say was a native of Moyos in the municipality of Sabanilla, had nothing to do with the conflict and was just returning from working with his motorcycle.”

The general assembly of ejido owners also reports disappeared after the attack, which Eliasin Bárcenas would have led, “firing with high-caliber weapons as well as with small arms” because of which “they retreated into the mountains while they continued shooting at them and as of this moment there are many disappeared ejido owners.” Unofficially, the ejido owners distanced themselves from the new deaths.

The Digna Ochoa Committee also blamed the government of Rutilio Escandón Cárdenas for being “remiss and negligent” and also talks about “six people executed” (sic) in the confrontation. It also censures the position of the Catholic Diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, arguing that the la Tila parish would favor the autonomous, who are the guilty ones in the eyes of the Digna Ochoa Committee. It also records that: “the tense climate continued during the early morning with threats that the electricity would be cut off and the houses of the avecindados, [1] and at 1:30 am the lifeless body of Pablo Vásquez Álvarez continued lying in the streets of the town, and that the access road to Tila is totally closed.”

[1] “Avecindados” are people who are not from the Tila ejido but have moved into the urban part of the ejido, in other words, the town of Tila. They do not have rights of ownership or participation in the ejido general assembly.

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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada

Sunday, September 13, 2020

https://www.jornada.com.mx/2020/09/13/politica/011n1pol

Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee