Mexico: Acteal Detainees Released by Supreme Court from Prison Must Live in Exile

Tzotzil people from the municipality of Chenalhó (Photo: Cuartoscuro Archive)

CNN Mexico: Ángeles Mariscal

Last Wednesday the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) ordered the release of fifteen additional indigenous arrested for the 1997 massacre in the community of Acteal, Chiapas. However, they will have to live in exile, since under an agreement with the local authorities they cannot return to their communities.

MV Note: The Acteal Massacre was the slaughter, on December 22, 1997, in the village of that name in Chiapas, of forty-five members of the pacifist group Las Abejas ("The Bees"), who were attending a prayer meeting. The group supports the goals of the Zapatistas. The massacre was carried out by the paramilitary group Mascara Roja, or Red Mask. (For more history, see Wikipedia).

Secretary of Government of Chiapas, Noé Castañón León, told CNN México: 

"In the eyes of the community, they (those released) are guilty."

"Their return to Chenalhó (the municipality where Acteal is located) was too risky ... Because the legal exoneration granted by the Court one thing, but the other are the social perceptions of their innocence," he added.

To prevent violent incidents, authorities and those released in 1997 signed an agreement to prevent the exonerated indigenous people from returning to Chenalhó and to their home communities. The government would grant agricultural lands, a house and production projects, initially on accommodation (comodato, a legal concept that establishes that they can make use of the resources, but have no legal ownership of them) for a period of five years, after which the goods would become their property.

"Prison is not a game. One abandons the family. I couldn't give education to my eleven children, who were very young. Now we don't know if we are going to return. We can't take it in. We agreed to sign the agreement but I am not happy because I remain estranged from my family. I am an exile," Jacinto Arias Cruz told CNNMéxico. 

When the massacre occurred, Jaciento Arias Cruz was mayor of the municipality of Chenalhó, and he is among those released on Wednesday.

Arias argues that before the massacre, he asked for help from then-Governor of Chiapas, Julio César Ruiz Ferro, to stop the violence in the region. He didn't succeed, "and they unjustly punished me."

He added that the violence that led to the massacre of forty-five Tzotzil people came from "the organizations", including the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN).

"They (the survivors) like the organization, they liked to associate with the people who do not like to live in peace. Before that we all lived peacefully," he said.

Despite Their Exile: "We Have No Hard Feelings"

In December of 1997, a few days after the murder of forty-five indigenous Tzotzil, Lorenzo Ruiz Vázquez and other indigenous from Chenalhó were arrested under false pretenses and transferred to the Attorney General's Office (PGR) of Chiapas, state located in the south of Mexico.

After spending ten years in prison, accused of the crimes of homicide, assault and illegal possession of a firearm, fourteen indigenous were released in 2009 by a ruling of the Supreme Court, which acted on appeal brought by Public Interest Clinic of the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE).


Lorenzo recalls that he wept after he left prison during the night of August 12, 2009. First, he shed tears of joy to know that he would come out of prison followed by tears of sorrow, when they told him he could not return to his home community, or approach the municipality of Chenalhó.

We have no hard feelings, but "only God knows who is the provocateur," said Nicolás Hernández Pérez, released in February of 2012. Hernández Pérez argues that he agreed to sign the agreement that prevents him from returning to his village, "to avoid falling into the provocation".

Hernández Pérez believes that there is a reason for the relocation:

"We have no hard feelings. When we were in prison, we changed the way we think and act ... There they (Acteal survivors) hold hard feelings against us."

Pending: Resolution of Complaint Before Inter-American Human Rights Commission

Survivors of the massacre, members of the Las Abejas [The Bees] organization of Acteal, have protested against the Supreme Court decisions that since 2009, [Supreme Court decisions] have resulted in the release of the detainees involved in the massacre. The protesters demand that they [detainees] remain in prison.

They argue that they fully recognized the seventy-nine people arrested as the people involved in the deaths of their colleagues, and they insist they are the perpetrators of those acts.

"They still have their weapons concealed, they continue threatening, and some have gone to Chenalhó," they charge.

As survivors, they filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). On their application, they ask the Mexican government to prosecute former president Ernesto Zedillo; Emilio Chuayffet, who was Secretary of Government Affairs [SEGOB] in 1997 and today is Secretary of Education; former governor Ruiz Ferro; and then-Secretary of Defense, General Enrique Cervantes Aguirre. All of them are believed to be the masterminds of the massacre.

Another group filed suit against Ernesto Zedillo in a U.S. court to demand financial compensation. The survivors claim that justice has not been applied against what they perceive was a "State crime". Spanish original