by Elio Henriquez, La Jornada correspondent | February 3, 2024

San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas. The National Network of Civil Human Rights Organizations “All Rights for All” (Red TDT, Red Nacional de Organismos Civiles de Derechos Humanos Todos los Derechos para Todas, Todos y Todes), reported that 28 support bases of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), were forcibly displaced from the autonomous community of La Resistencia, located in the Moisés and Gandhi region, in the official municipality of Ocosingo, “by more than 40 members of the Ocosingo Regional Coffee Growers Organization (ORCAO), who carried firearms, machetes and sticks.”

In an “urgent action” communique, they said that “during the attack, the autonomous primary school and 15 houses made of tin and wood were destroyed, in addition to ‘books belonging to education promoters being burned and a store robbed.’”

They added: “The community was stripped of various material goods: backyard animals, work tools, a coffee pulper and presses for making tortillas,” apart from the fact that the attackers “destroyed nearby crops and threw away stored foods such as corn, beans, coffee and sugar”.

The urgent action also noted that “according to the information received, on January 17, 2024, the community was threatened. The attacking group arrived at the Zapatista town of La Resistencia, carrying sticks and machetes. At this moment they stated that the Zapatista bases had two days to abandon their homes.”

The Red TDT stated that “in the same region, on January 19, 2024, 54 people from the ORCAO from the town of Sacrificio La Esperanza came to burn a pasture of the EZLN bases in the town of Emiliano Zapata, leaving the grazing animals without food.”

The Red TDT expressed “concern about the permissiveness and overlap of the Mexican State,” since, “based on information received in this office, we document that on January 14, 2024, the municipal councilor of Ocosingo inaugurated an ORCAO municipal agency in the space stripped from the Zapatista bases in November 2021, where the Zapatista Arcoíris collective store was located at the Cuxuljá highway junction.”

They recalled that “the aggressions of the ORCAO towards the EZLN have been a constant in the area of Moisés and Gandhi, which has caused a continuity of serious violations of human rights in the region such as forced displacements, torture, forced disappearance and attempted homicides.”

Red TDT commented that “on May 5, 2022, the La Resistencia community was forcibly displaced in a similar attack, reported by this organization. On May 23, 2023, Jorge López Sántiz, a Zapatista support base, a neighbor of Moisés and Gandhi, was the victim of an armed attack that put his life at serious risk.”

The Network demanded that the federal and state governments “guarantee respect for the territory of the Zapatista bases, their free determination and autonomy, as well as a life free of violence; “that an immediate and diligent investigation be carried out to generate a route that prioritizes ending this climate of violence and adopting actions aimed at repairing the damage and initiating a justice process” in favor of the 28 displaced people, including ten girls and boys.

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Published in Spanish on-line by La Jornada on February 3, 2024 and translated by the Chiapas Support Committee. Read the original here: https://www.jornada.com.mx/noticia/2024/02/03/estados/en-chiapas-grupo-armado-desplaza-a-comunidad-zapatista-a-resistencia-8321

The Chiapas Support Committee invites you to take urgent action in solidarity with the EZLN support bases that were forcibly displaced by the rightwing violence. The Red TDT petition, “Forced displacement of 28 Zapatistas in the Moisés and Gandhi region,” is in Spanish. Click here to sign the Red TDT urgent action alert: https://redtdt.org.mx/archivos/18769?fbclid=IwAR2diVLc_LNLROZgqroExHmTUt91yF-0l0wZMhX85ruozypKcXq1iau7-sI