Women and Children hide from paramilitary gunfire in the Chiapas Highlands.

By: Elio Henríquez

San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas

Yesterday, members of “paramilitary-style armed groups” in Santa Martha, Chenalhó, shot and injured an inhabitant of Aldama, Mayor Adolfo López Gómez reported.

“Andrés Jiménez Pérez, 39, a native of San Pedro Cotzilnam community, was wounded by a shot from a high-caliber weapon when he was walking along the highway that leads to Tabac and his house,” he explained.

He added that the indigenous man, a member of the permanent commission of 115 Aldama comuneros and displaced persons, “was returning from cutting coffee and was carrying a bundle of it when the armed groups from Santa Martha strongly attacked and wounded him in both legs.”

López Gómez said that Jiménez Pérez was initially taken to the Aldama health center for medical care, and then moved to the Hospital of Cultures, in San Cristóbal de Las Casas.

“Gunshots from high-caliber weapons were coming from the spot known as T’elemax, located next to the Exatlón Telesecundaria and were directed at Tabak and Cocó communities,” he said.

The attack occurred two days after Aldama and Santa Martha authorities, the latter headed by the municipal authorities of Chenalhó, signed an agreement [1] to put an end to a conflict that originated 45 years ago over the dispute of 60 hectares, but which since some time ago took on another connotation.

Municipal authorities sign the “definitive agreement.”

In this context, the Board of Directors of Cáritas in the Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas urged the “expedited action” of government agencies so that “they attend to and promote the full resolution of the conflict in accordance with justice” between Aldama and Santa Martha, Chenalhó, and that “they take the urgent and necessary determinations for disarming of the paramilitary groups that operate in this zone emboldened.”

[1] Pedro Faro, Director of the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center stated in a public conversation Tuesday, December 1, that the definitive agreement was a “simulation.”

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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada

Monday, November 30, 2020

https://www.jornada.com.mx/2020/11/30/politica/011n1pol

Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee