Chiapas Support Committee
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The Battle of Frontera Comalapa
By: Luis Hernández Navarro
The ambush in which José Fernando Ruiz Montejo, El Poni, and three of his bodyguards fell, in the Joaquín Miguel Gutiérrez ejido, Frontera Comalapa, Chiapas, at the border of Guatemala and Mexico, on December 28, 2020, was the beginning of a war between cartels in the state, which escalates more and more every day.
Six months later, in July 2021, the struggle was exacerbated by the murder of Ramón Gilberto Rivera, alias El JR, in Tuxtla Gutiérrez. El Junior was the son of Tío Gil, an operator of the Sinaloa cartel in the state until his capture in 2016. The crime was the work of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
Later, on October 9 and 10, 2022, a pitched battle arose between Jalisco and Sinaloa, in Jiquipilas. A name began to spread widely: Juan Manuel Valdovinos Mendoza, The Lord of the Horses, head of New Generation in the state. In a message to the population, the one also known as El Fraile, warned: I will do everything in my power not to let in those scourges of society called the Sinaloa Cartel.
Among other regions of the state, the organized crime dispute over territories, routes and markets moved to Frontera Comalapa, which until 2015 could boast of security, tranquility and peace. It is a municipality that connects the border of Guatemala, La Mesilla, with the Sierra Madre de Chiapas. It is the commercial and monetary flow center in the region. It has about 81 thousand inhabitants and in the municipal seat, 20 thousand. There are large ejidos, such as Paso Hondo and Tierra Blanca. It has long been a passage for undocumented immigrants.
Comalapa has three important areas: 1) The area with irrigation, a real battleground between cartels; 2) The area where crops are seasonal, with ejidos that go from Paso Hondo looking for the dam, and 3) The Grijalva area, which starts from the municipal seat and goes to a part of the dam.
In Holy Week 2020, clashes began to escalate in the region of San Gregorio Chamic, between the CDP [1] and the CJNG, an ally of the Guatemalan criminal group Los Huistas. Chamic belongs to [the municipality of Comalapa], borders La Trinitaria and is a stronghold of the Sinaloa Cartel. Gradually, the clashes became more frequent: from bimonthly to weekly. The murder of El Junior accelerated them.
In their war against the Pacific Cartel, those of Jalisco and The Huistas decided to use the population as a shield, subduing it through the MAIZ Foundation (supposedly, Mano Izquierda). They force transporters, peasants, neighborhood representatives, tenants, to block roads and highways when they order it. If they don’t, there is revenge.
According to a refugee from Comalapa: If you have a taqueria, those from Maiz go and tell you: “You are going to be from the foundation and we will paint you here. When I tell him he has to get out, he’s going to get out. It is only the temporary part. Not in Chamic, because the others are there. They stop the transport and in less than three minutes they paralyze everything.”
In the early morning of May 22, 2023, the Battle of Frontera Comalapa began. It lasted until Thursday 25. The Chamic wanted to advance through Chicomuselo, Motozintla and Paso Hondo. They were unsuccessful. Finally, they raided the Grijalva area, to take the municipal seat. On the way they savagely cleaned the route of peasants subdued by MAIZ. The zone of attack was Nuevo Independencia. But those from Jalisco arrived earlier, surrounded the ejido and took over the park.
For 48 hours bullets rained down nonstop. Inhabitants locked themselves in their homes and ate what they could. The clash escalated. Drones from both sides flew over houses, dropped bombs and some were shot down by enemy fire. Those of Jalisco took their “monsters” into combat. Bazookas. Finally, the Comalapa group defeated the Chamic group and recovered the community of Lajerío. There was a truce of about four hours. Still the Pacific Cartel tried a counteroffensive unsuccessfully. About 48 hours later, when things had calmed down, the Army arrived.
On May 25, people started walking along the harvest roads and bridle paths, where only horses pass. They crossed mountains, rivers and forests. They grabbed hardly anything. They brought a backpack with clothes, food, water. There were no passenger cars. They could not take private cars because the “narco-checkpoints” prevented passage. The communities were left like ghost towns.
A banner placed in Mazapa de Madero by Motozintla, bordering Comalapa, warned: “We are coming for you, Güero Pulseras [the head of the Pacific]” and also denounced three officials allegedly linked to drug trafficking: Francisco Javier Orantes, undersecretary of Public Security; Roberto Jair Hernández, director of the Border Police, and Marco Antonio Burguete, director of the state preventive police.
On June 27, armed and hooded men “picked up” (kidnapped) 16 employees of the Ministry of Public Security. They demanded for their release the presentation alive of the singer Nayeli Cyrene Cinco Martínez, kidnapped on June 22, probable partner of Fredy Ruiz Güé, lieutenant of Juan Manuel Valdovinos, and the dismissal of three police commanders (those indicated in the narco-banner of Mazapa), accused of protecting those of the Pacific. The abductees were released and arrived 200 meters from the Police Academy to meet their families.
A Big March is planned for July 14 in San Cristóbal
Tired of paying for a rivalry with which they have nothing to do, outraged by the violence, determined to stop a war that does not dare to say its name, on July 14, the three dioceses of Chiapas, the evangelical community and a multitude of social organizations and popular groups will march in San Cristóbal for life, Family and community.
[1] The Sinaloa Cartel is also known as the Pacific Cartel (CDP, Cártel del Pacífico).
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada, Tuesday, July 4, 2023, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2023/07/04/opinion/019a1pol and Re-Published with English interpretation. by the Chiapas Support Committee
Tired of paying for a rivalry with which they have nothing to do, outraged by the violence, determined to stop a war that does not dare to say its name, on July 14, the three dioceses of Chiapas, the evangelical community and a multitude of social organizations and popular groups will march in San Cristóbal for life, Family and community[1] The Sinaloa Cartel is also known as the Pacific Cartel (CDP, Cártel del Pacífico)==Ω==
Catholics of Frontera Comalapa ask for peace and maintaining vigilance
They demand that the government ally with citizens, and not with organized crime!
By: Elio Henríquez, Correspondent
San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas
Around 4,000 Catholics from the municipality of Frontera Comalapa made a pilgrimage yesterday [July 2, 2023] to ask for peace and that the security corporations not withdraw from the town. [1]
With the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in front, people began their walk at nine in the morning from the esplanade of the fair, and after touring the main streets they arrived at the Church of the Santo Niño de Atocha (Holy Child of Atocha), patron saint of that town, where a mass was celebrated.
Long live peace, long live justice, long live unity, long live the communities, long live the pilgrim Church, chanted the demonstrators, men, women and children, dressed in white clothes, carrying flags, summoned by the diocese of San Cristóbal.
We need and want there to be peace, justice and freedom, said Catholics from four of the five areas in which the parish is divided, who sang religious songs and walked accompanied by the sound of the caracol, characteristic among the native peoples.
The pact must be with citizens, not with organized crime, said participants in the mobilization, which took place without any incidents being reported. They wrote on a white blanket: Peace is the fruit of justice.
Some of the attendees commented that they are also protesting against the violence exercised by organized crime groups that dispute territory.
They recalled that at the end of May members of criminal gangs confronted each other with bullets in the town of Nueva Libertad (Lajerío), which caused more than 3,000 residents to move for a week, until the security forces entered the municipality.
They pointed out that since the entry of the security forces, days later, a certain tranquility has been maintained, so they asked that they remain.
They explained that the situation in Frontera Comalapa broke down more than two years ago, when a group of the Sinaloa cartel split and joined the Jalisco New Generation cartel, and now they dispute the territory. This struggle causes frequent clashes, disappearances and roadblocks in the section located between Frontera Comalapa and Comitán.
Until a few months ago, hostilities between the two groups and occasionally between them and security forces occurred in the town of Chamic, about 20 kilometers from the border with Guatemala, but then spread to the vicinity of the capital.
[1] Last week, another 4,000 marched for peace in Frontera Comalapa. They didn’t say who convened that march, but the total of the 2 marches is a lot for a rural municipality.
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada, Monday, July 3, 2023, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2023/07/03/estados/029n1est and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committree
Zibechi: The impotence of the states
By: Raúl Zibechi
We are accustomed to the fact that defenders of state-centric policy publicize the actions of states, emphasizing their achievements and omitting state criminality, which is usually attributed to drug trafficking groups and armed gangs that multiply thanks to the support they receive from official armed institutions.
However, very little is mentioned about what these states are not doing, what they cannot or do not want to do for the most diverse reasons. They try to hide the fact that violence, which continues to grow in most of our countries, from Mexico to Chile, would not happen without the complicity, silence or direct support of the police and military, as well as businessmen and federal, state and municipal governments.
Let’s look at some examples.
What can states do in the face of the climate crisis and mass migration? The rulers say they do their best, meet, convene expensive international conferences and summits among leaders, but they just remain empty declarations that nobody trusts, except those who benefit from those meetings.
But the question should go deeper. What could the states and governments do if they were led by honest people? Or something more complex: is it possible to stop or reverse climate change? What about migrations?
A study published by the journal Nature Sustainability says that 3 to 6 billion people, between one-third and one-half of humanity, could be trapped outside the environmental niche where life is possible, facing extreme heat, food shortages and higher mortality rates, unless emissions are drastically reduced or mass migration is taken into account.
To reverse the climate crisis, there would have to be a drastic change in two central issues: the accumulation of capital by dispossession or theft and the ways of life of the portion of humanity that lives quite well, that is, the middle and upper classes of the world. Both are impossible. The first because it is the richest one percent who has shown that it does not want to leave its place of privilege.
The second because cultural changes are very slow and nobody wants to lose their standard of living, of consumption. How many of the people who are reading these lines would be willing to live like the original peoples of Chiapas who, just for being poor, are poor and are being punished by the powerful?
It is not easy to change the way of life. Even less to do it by will and not by necessity. If half of the planet’s population can migrate for climatic reasons, it is clear that this huge and brutal proportion cannot be contained even by the most powerful state. United States authorities are absolutely powerless to stop the clouds of smoke and dust caused these days by the wildfires in Canada.
These days I am in Venezuela, where there is no gasoline and the country is paralyzed. I come from Uruguay, where I live and there is no drinking water anymore. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world and Uruguay was a paradise of abundant drinking water of very good quality.
In both cases we see the impotence of states. Refineries in Venezuela are between 60 and 70 years old, have not been repaired and now have almost permanent failures. Venezuela is now dependent on gasoline shipments from Iran. The monoculture of hydrocarbons is at the base of this tremendous crisis.
In Uruguay, agricultural production for export is responsible for the current shortage, although it was aggravated by the long drought caused by climate change. Deforestation, soy monocultures and dairy plantations are at the root of the current water scarcity, since the main basins are polluted without anyone responding, neither the current right-wing government nor the previous left-wing ones.
In both countries, accumulation by dispossession is ultimately responsible for disasters. But the gravity of the situation that affects us can no longer be resolved either with demonstrations (in Montevideo they are daily and are necessary to alert the population to the official silence), or with changes of government. The force of inertia to which Fernand Braudel alluded is so important that not even the collapse of the current world-system is capable of making populations modify their habits, particularly urban ones.
Seven years ago, at the Critical Thought in the Face of the Capitalist Hydra, gathering held in San Cristobal de las Casas, the EZLN warned about the dimension of the migrations expected for this century. To some of us it seemed exaggerated, but reality is surpassing us.
What are we going to do given the evidence that we are facing risks that neither the states nor the governments can resolve? It is evident that we must choose between autonomy and barbarity.
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada, Friday, June 14, 2023, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2023/06/16/opinion/015a2pol and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Incessant violence
By: Luis Hernández Navarro
On June 1, narco-banners were hung on four pedestrian bridges in the municipality of Frontera Comalapa, Chiapas. Ten days later, notices reappeared on public roads, indicating that the Army took journalists to report on risk areas.
The local press documented the news and published photographs. On one of the narco-banners, painted on a red and yellow background and with letters labeled in three colors: “General Arturo Gonzalez Jimenez. How much is your compadre Mosh paying you and your narco-military Felix Moreno Ibarra and Andrei Calderon Muños to clean the plaza for the Jalisco cartel and the Huistlas. You come to our villages where we live in calm knowing that the conflict is not here but in the villages of your friends, diverting the attention that even reporters brought. Why don’t you go to Sabinalito, Paso Hondo, Potrerillos, Frontera Comalapa and Chicomuselo” [sic] (https://cutt.ly/AwyeK8RH).
The Frontera Comalapa region, on the border with Guatemala, experienced days of terror in late May and early June. Videos documenting shootings, roadblocks, burned cars, deployment of armored vehicles known as “monsters” and denunciations of forced disappearances circulated profusely in the social networks. Thousands of villagers had to leave their homes and animals to protect themselves from kidnappings (levantones) and violence. On May 30, hundreds of soldiers and National Guard members carried out an operation in the region and established checkpoints.
On June 2, 2023, many kilometers away from Frontera Comalapa, in the town of Polhó, municipality of Chenalhó, very close to where the Acteal massacre was perpetrated, seven people died in an ambush. In a warehouse of the community were 200 refugees displaced from the Santa Martha ejido. As they passed by, Gilberto Pérez Gómez, his family and two members of his personal guard, belonging to the Los Ratones group, were ambushed and died. The other person who died is Fernando Ruiz, son of the owner of the place where the refugees live.
Although there are rumors that Los Ratones could have been responsible for the crime, authorized sources indicate that they were traveling in a van behind Pérez Gómez, but many of the bullet impacts on Gilberto’s truck were in the front.
History goes way back. On March 3, gunmen killed Petrona López Pérez, wife of Daniel López Méndez, commander of the El Machete Peoples’ Self-defense Group in Pantelhó. Various sources indicate that Doña Petrona was killed by the late Gilberto Pérez, originally a member of the self-defense group, who ended up allying himself with the Herrera clan, a rival group of El Machete. The people displaced from Santa Martha would have protection from the armed civilian group.
For years, the Herrera family controlled the municipality of Pantelhó with blood and fire. With the support of gunmen from Campeche, Veracruz and Sinaloa, this group conquered territorial control through terror, murders, disappearances, robberies, dispossession and forced displacement, carrying weapons and explosives for the exclusive use of the Mexican Army. Electorally it used the acronym of the PRD (https://cutt.ly/EwyeImaf). The clan’s patriarch, Austreberto, is in jail for killing two people in the municipality in April 2015. In July 2021, the catechist Simón Pedro Pérez, who had chaired the board of directors of the Civil Society Las Abejas de Acteal, was killed in Simojovel.
During their bonanza days, the Herrera clan had Enoc Díaz Pérez (Encuentro Social Party) as an advisor, boss of the criminal gang Los Cacheros, later re-baptized as Los Diablos, and of the paramilitary-style movement named Proyecto Amigo Revolucionario No. 7 (Revolutionary Friend Project Number 7). Enoc had been municipal president of Pueblo Nuevo Solistahuacán, when the municipal council (and the region) was controlled by heroin traffickers, Antonio Laredo Donjuán and his wife Mercedes Barrios Hernández, who were arrested in 2018 at the request of the United States government, which asked for their extradition.
On June 7 2021, the El Machete Peoples’ Self-defense Group irrupted violently in the municipal seat of Pantelhó, to expel the sicarios (hit men), drug traffickers and organized crime, because we don’t want more deaths for the poor Tseltal and Tsotsil campesinos. They successfully fought with firearms against the Herrera group. They have controlled the region since then. However, their self-declared righteous vocation faded very quickly.
Just this last June 19, the paramilitary group called the Regional Organization of Ocosingo Coffee Growers (ORCAO, Organización Regional de Caficultores de Ocosingo), simultaneously attacked three Zapatista support base communities in the Moisés Gandhi region. They torched plots of land and fired gunshots for three days straight. It is the ORCAO’s eleventh armed attack on the rebels so far, under the current administration. All have been perpetrated with absolute impunity. Not a single person has been arrested for the attacks.
This brief account sets aside, for reasons of space, many other acts of violence against different communities in resistance in Chiapas or in cities such as San Cristóbal. Those acts of violence also intersect with 1) disputes between organized crime gangs that fight over plazas, markets, territories and routes; 2) old and new paramilitary groups (which have been linked to drug cartels and polleros); 3) ) gunmen or gangs that have diversified their activities such as Los Ratones or Los Vatos Locos and, 4) self-defense groups. This, despite the enormous deployment of the Army and the National Guard in the state.
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada, Tuesday, June 27, 2023, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2023/06/27/opinion/019a1pol and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Some 4,000 march to demand security in Frontera Comalapa
Residents are caught in the middle of a fight between two cartels
By: Elio Henríquez, Correspondent
San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas
Around 4,000 inhabitants of Frontera Comalapa marched on Monday, June 26, in the municipal seat to demand peace and tranquility.
Men and women with banners and signs that had photographs of missing persons walked about six miles from the New Mexico turnoff to Central Park without incident.
“We want people to be safe. We are united now. We were not forced to come. We are here voluntarily,” said one participant. We wear white because we want peace and quiet in Frontera Comalapa, in its neighborhoods and communities. We are merchants, transporters and inhabitants who want security for our families.”
Another person, who asked not to be named, said: “We demand that the three levels of government look at our municipality. We demand respect for our lives. All we want is to live in peace and to have the rule of law applied equally to all, not just to a few who cannot defend themselves. We are not asking for money nor are we putting up a candidate.”
For their part, residents of Frontera Comalapa who did not attend the demonstration reported that there were three lines of about four kilometers, but many people were forced to participate; In addition, the safety motorcycles of the organizers passed by all the time to keep people in the line.
They said the protesters were given plenty of water and juices, and a lot of garbage was left all along the stretch they walked.
The protesters also requested that the reinforcement of security operations on roads and in cities and communities continue.
The march took place a month after members of criminal groups exchanged gunfire during a battle in the town of Nueva Libertad, which caused the displacement of some 3,000 residents for a week, until security forces entered the municipality.
Residents said that the situation in Frontera Comalapa got worse more than two years ago, when a group separated from the Sinaloa Cartel and joined the Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG).
Both criminal organizations dispute territories in the state, leading to confrontations, disappearances and road blocks on the stretch between Frontera Comalapa and Comitán.
Shootouts between these criminal groups, and occasionally between them and security forces, occurred in the town of Chamic, about 20 kilometers from the border with Guatemala. But then a few months ago, it spread to the areas surrounding the municipal seat of Frontera Comalapa.
Among those missing (disappeared) are the president and secretary of the Nueva Libertad ejido commission , Jordán Gordillo Genovez and José Marín Carvajal Méndez, respectively, kidnapped on March 22 in the municipality of La Trinitaria. Along with them, five other members of the commission also went missing, but appeared days later.
For their part, Catholic church sources reported that they are preparing a pilgrimage for peace to take place on July 2 in the town of Frontera Comalapa, which is the municipal seat of the municipality with the same name.
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada, Tuesday, June 27, 2023, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2023/06/27/estados/028n1est and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Protest the violence against Zapatista communities!
Friday, June 30, 12 Noon, Mexican Consulate, 532 Folsom, San Francisco
The Chiapas Support Committee is joining “It wasn’t the fire: Bi-National Action in solidarity with Migrants.” Join us to protest both the counterinsurgency war against the Zapatista Peoples and against migrants in Mexico and the United States.
Published by the Chiapas Support Committee, an adherent to the EZLN’s 6th Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle.
Chiapas: “Necro-power” and paramilitarism
By: Carlos Fazio
The Fourth Transformation’s “humanism” did not reach the Mexican southeast. Chiapas is a powder keg about to explode. And not because of the absence of the State: given that it is a territory of great geopolitical and geo-economic importance – and also bordering Guatemala – for reasons of national security there is a strong military presence there, as well as the National Guard and the different police forces, which was exacerbated after the imposition, by the governments of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, with the militarized control (by the Mexican State) of the migratory waves coming from Central America. Hence, by action or omission, collusion, cohabitation or acquiescence of the State, the current state and non-governmental criminal violence (paramilitary, criminal) against indigenous communities with support bases of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) responds to another logic: that of counterinsurgency.
In Chiapas they knot, intertwine and/or confront a series of contradictions, concepts and categories that include, on the one hand: internal colonialism; neo-extractivism (the main axis of the capitalist megaprojects of the trans-Isthmus corridor and the misnamed Maya Train); diffuse war; necro-politics; racism; State terrorism; population control; forced displacement. And on the other hand: community; self-determination; autonomy; collective rights; anti-systemic and counter-hegemonic principles; organization; resistance; defense of land and territories; dignity.
The EZLN took up arms and declared war on the Mexican State on January 1, 1994. After 12 days of clashes, the government of Carlos Salinas decreed a ceasefire against the Zapatista peoples and negotiations began with the mediation of the then bishop of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Samuel Ruiz. After the San Andrés Dialogues, the regime of Ernesto Zedillo did not comply with the agreements and the EZLN dedicated itself to building de facto autonomy in its territory in a civil and peaceful manner, in addition to being a key actor for the advancement and exercise of the rights of indigenous peoples. But it remains an armed political-military actor.
Since 1995, the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA) began a phase of irregular warfare and para-militarization of the conflict, which responded to the guidelines of the so-called Chiapas 94 Campaign Plan. The strategic-operational objective of this plan was “to destroy the EZLN’s will to fight, isolating it from the civilian population and obtaining its support, for the benefit of the Army’s operations.” The tactical objectives of Plan Chiapas 94 included “destroying and/or disorganizing the political and military structure of the EZLN,” for which, along with intelligence, psychological, civilian population control and logistical operations, the organization, training, advice and support of “self-defense forces or other paramilitary organizations” (sic) were instructed. And he added: “If there are no self-defense forces, it is necessary to create them.” In a textual way, it was ordered “to secretly organize certain sectors of the civilian population – among others, ranchers, small landowners and individuals characterized with a high patriotic sense – who will be employed under orders in support of our operations.”
According to the plan, the Army provided training, advice and support of the “self-defense forces” (SDF) and other paramilitary organizations. The paramilitaries were to participate in SEDENA’s security and development programs. Among other tasks, they had to provide information that fed the branches of military intelligence (counter-information, combat intelligence, intelligence for the support of psychological operations, intelligence on the internal situation).
The Acteal Massacre, in December 1997 −when 45 indigenous Tsotsiles were murdered while they were praying in that community’s chapel in the municipality of Chenalhó by the PRI paramilitary group Máscara Roja (Red Mask) and undercover members of the Army−, was a military action that followed the guidelines of the Manual of irregular warfare, counter-guerrilla operations and restoration of order, published by SEDENA. It teaches how to fight the insurgency. Quoting Mao Tse-Tung, it stated that “the people are to the guerrillas as water to the fish.” But the fish, it adds, “can make life impossible in the water, agitating it, introducing elements harmful to its subsistence, or braver fish that attack it, chase it and force it to disappear.” Paramilitaries, then.
Almost 25 years later, the Regional Organization of Ocosingo Coffee Growers (ORCAO) fulfills the role of Red Mask in the Acteal massacre. And together with the ORCAO, criminal groups – in complicity, collusion or under the protection of State security agencies – execute in Chiapas the tasks of generating terror and chaos that organizations of the criminal economy developed in geo-strategic areas of Mexico, such as the states located on the Burgos and Sabinas basin (Coahuila, Nuevo León), rich in uranium, coal and hydrocarbons, considered “Zeta territory” during the diffuse war of Felipe Calderón or in the area of the “hot land” of Michoacán, where the Army armed a civilian self-defense group (Hipólito Mora, Juan José Farías, Miguel Ángel Gutiérrez, José Manuel Mireles and others) to face the Knights Templar of Servando Gómez, La Tuta.
In all cases it is a question of destroying the communal social fabric through necro-politics, a category that, according to Achille Mbembe, implies the decision of who can live and who must die at the hands of “war machines” (state and private) to generate mass death, which exhibits the logic of twenty-first century capitalism as “administration and work of death,” with the material destruction of human bodies and populations judged as disposable and superfluous (killable, says Agamben). The goal of terror and necro-power is social subjugation; the submission of the other as part of a predatory dynamic of dispossession, dispossession and territorial reordering for the purposes of economic domination.
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada, Monday, June 12, 2023, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2023/06/12/opinion/015a2pol and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
In Baja, Veracruz and Puebla, activists demand a stop to the paramilitary attacks on EZLN communities
The official denialism favors impunity of the aggressors: Frayba
By: Antonio Heras, Correspondent
Mexicali, Baja California
On Sunday morning, members of the Mexicali Resissste Movement protested the armed attacks against communities of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN, Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional) in Chiapas. EZLN sympathizers also demonstrated yesterday in Puebla and in Veracruz on Saturday.
Stop the war against the Zapatista peoples, said a group of activists in the agricultural area of Mexicali, capital of Baja California.
The demonstration, called by the National Network of Civil Human Rights Organizations, responds to the aggressions suffered in recent days in the autonomous municipality of Lucio Cabañas (Ocosingo), which include the burning of plots of land. The group accused the Regional Organization of Ocosingo Coffee Growers (ORCAO), which has been described as a paramilitary group, of these acts.
Puebla activists demanded that the Chiapas authorities, as well as those of the federal government, stop the war against the Zapatista peoples. They also expressed their solidarity with the populations affected by the paramilitary attacks.
On Saturday, a group of EZLN supporters demonstrated in Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada Square in Xalapa, Veracruz, to demand an end to paramilitary attacks in Chiapas territory.
Last Friday, during his morning press conference, held in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador explained that attacks against Zapatista communities in Chiapas are not widespread.
Later, the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) asserted that the denial of this violence deepens the impunity promoted by municipal, state and federal actors that contribute to dispossession, exploitation and social marginalization, in addition to exacerbating the human rights crisis.
It denounced the systematic attacks against the political project of autonomy of the EZLN, led by corporatist armed groups, which have perpetrated, since 2019, more than 110 armed attacks against the Zapatista communities that belong to the region of Moisés Gandhi.
In a document, it said the attacks have included burning of schools and coffee warehouses, armed assaults, torture, kidnappings and serious injuries.
The Frayba indicated that it has asked state and federal authorities to guarantee the life and integrity of the communities, but they have been ignored. At the same time, it added, the armed group responsible, the ORCAO, acts with total impunity.
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada, Monday, June 26, 2023, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2023/06/26/estados/030n1est and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Inter-American Court for Human Rights and forced displacement
By: Magdalena Gómez
Within the very broad cases and situations of human rights violations in our country, a campaign is underway that seeks to stop the war in Chiapas against the Zapatista communities, without this war only affecting them, but has become a complex pattern in many regions of the national territory. All of which, without a doubt, place the focus of attention on the Mexican State, not only on the current government and on the six-year term of office, but on the structural breach, by action or omission, of a central function, which is to guarantee respect for the human rights of everyone, without distinction. For the victims, their families, human rights organizations, the fight against impunity is present and the inalienable decision to use the legal spaces at their disposal at all levels, national and international, the little windows or vents, which the Mixe leader Floriberto Díaz Gómez said, without forgetting the need to maintain the effort in the dissemination of these struggles to achieve commitment and social awareness in this regard. Always facing the risk that before justice the official criminalization of its promoters is received as a clear example that it’s better to eliminate the messenger than to eliminate his message.
In this context, today we call attention to the case of Antonio González Méndez, a member of the EZLN’s civilian bases, who was disappeared on January 18, 1999 by the paramilitary group [ironically named] Paz y Justicia (Peace and Justice), which operated in municipalities in the northeastern zone of Chiapas, within the framework of the counterinsurgency policy implemented by the Mexican State after the EZLN Uprising. As we know well, a central part of it was the formation of paramilitary groups, against civilians, whose objective was to provoke a state of terror that would prevent the communities from supporting the insurgency.
Faced with the adverse national context for justice, Antonio’s family and the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) decided to go to the Inter-American Human Rights System in 2000 to sue the Mexican State for both his disappearance and for impunity.
After a long international process, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued its merits report in 2019, and recognized that the state’s counterinsurgency policy was considered proven, the participation of the State in the formation of paramilitary groups, and that Paz y Justicia was one of them. Additionally, it demanded an investigation of the facts and a search for Antonio in this context.
The Mexican government, in times of the so-called Fourth Transformation, decided to give a minimum compliance, just the protocol, with the substantive report: the undersecretary of Human Rights, Migration and Population offered a public apology in which he recognized the context of the disappearance. To date, no actions have been taken to search for Antonio González, and even fewer have lines of investigation have been considered in accordance with the internationally recognized counterinsurgency context.
Given the continuity of the State’s omissions, the case was finally presented to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Coridh). The Mexican government again denied the counterinsurgency policy. The Frayba has denounced that such a position in fact, makes it an accomplice of previous governments, and responsible for the psychosocial effects that continue to occur due to the lack of truth for the victims of paramilitarism in Chiapas, as is the case of the survivors of the Acteal massacre, or the relatives of the other 37 disappeared and the 85 people “executed” by Paz y Justicia.
The Frayba announced that in the coming days the case will be heard before the Inter-American Court. [1] It highlights and draws attention to the fact that this is the first time that the Court knows about this context, and implies a new opportunity for the Mexican State to be condemned, to recognize the truth about this episode in history, and to finally commit itself to reparations for all the victims of its criminal policy. It is emphasized that the Inter-American Court can strengthen the historical demand for the Mexican State to recognize that the disappearance of Antonio González Méndez was committed within the framework of its counterinsurgency policy, developed in Chiapas during the 90s. Also, the always valid urgency of its exhaustive search, and definitive recognition of the truth and responsibility for all the crimes committed in this period. Because it wouldn’t just be about one case and one missing person.
We are talking about setting an indispensable precedent to speak with solvency of the rule of law in the country.
[1] The case was heard on June 21, 2023. The Mexican State again denied responsibility, claiming that the petitioner had not proven a connection between the State and the paramilitary group. The parties await the Court’s decision.
Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada, Tuesday, June 20, 2023, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2023/06/20/opinion/018a2pol and Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas Support Committee 