Comalapa and San Gregorio Chamic are cheered by residents. See the video here.
Mexico City | Desinformémonos. Faced with the growing dominance of organized crime groups throughout Chiapas, the Diocese of San Cristóbal criticized “the silence of the authorities” which demonstrates “a failed state that has surpassed and/or colluded with criminal groups,” whose presence and territorial disputes subject the population to a general climate of violence in which forced recruitment, kidnappings, threats and dispossession predominate.
“Criminal groups have taken over our territory and we find ourselves in a state of siege, under social psychosis with narco-blockades, which they use as a human barrier to civil society, forcing them to be there and putting their lives and that of their families at risk,” The Diocese denounced in a statement released on September 23, in which it pointed out the omission of “municipal and regional prosecutors, municipal presidents, and the state and federal governments.”
Journalist Hermann Bellinghausen, a correspondent in Chiapas, summarizes the situation of violence as generated largely by territorial disputes among cartels in search of new routes to the north of the state, especially the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel. The climate of violence is also due to the presence of armed civil groups in municipalities such as Pantelhó and Chenalhó, the so-called “motonetos” in San Cristóbal de las Casas, the protection fees for spaces in public markets and “old” territorial conflicts.
“The alarming cocktail [of violence] is accompanied by the immense wave of Central and South American migrants that floods the land border strip and who seek to enter the country at all costs. They constitute another commodity for criminals,” highlights Bellinghausen.
Control by organized crime groups extends from the capital to the municipalities and roads throughout the state. Just today a video was released in which a caravan of armed men from the Sinaloa Cartel can be seen on the highway between the municipalities of Frontera Comalapa and San Gregorio Chamic, amidst cheers and applause from the civilian population on the sides of the via. [See the video at Desinformémonos here.]
According to the Diocese of San Cristóbal, organized crime not only keeps the population of Chiapas subject to threat, harassment, persecution and shortages, but also exerts “pressure and social, political and psychological control of different groups so that the people take sides with one party or another of the criminal groups.”
So far, there has been no clear statement about the government’s intervention to protect the people of Chiapas and address the crisis of violence that the state undergoing. Already in 2021, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) had already framed the violent panorama in its statement “Chiapas on the brink of the civil war,” where the EZLN denounced the armed and paramilitary attacks on the indigenous communities of the state, the pilfering by officials “of everything they can from the state budget,” as well as the alliances of public servants with drug traffickers. “The government of Chiapas not only supports drug trafficking gangs, it also encourages, promotes and finances paramilitary groups,” Subcomandante Galeano said then.
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Translated by the Chiapas Support Committee from the original published September 25, 2023 by Desinformémonos available at https://desinformemonos.org/chiapas-un-estado-fallido-rebasado-y-coludido-con-los-grupos-delincuenciales-diocesis-de-san-cristobal/
Chiapas Support Committee 
Heart breaking . . . the USA ( Mexico’s northern border neighbor ) is criticized for it’s capitalistic culture . . . yet in the beautiful State of Chiapas the cartels & governments ( local, state & national ) are no better nor different! The cartels are using “revenues” of human trafficking & drugs, paying off authorities, and then DISRESPECTING the local population . . .