Translated by Shaun Twomey
With the objective of “knocking out terror” and demobilizing popular organizations, the successive governments of Chiapas state have created and financed various paramilitary groups which have committed dozens of assassinations, kidnappings, and robberies. What’s more, they have facilitated the forced displacement of thousands of people, according to members of the National Front for the Fight for Socialism (FNLS).
In a press conference, the activists remarked that “the paramilitary-like activities have been observed as a policy of the State” through which government officials:
“fund and organize these groups far and wide throughout the country in order to undermine the efforts of the people to defend their social rights,” while simultaneously evading their responsibility for the facts.In the case of the ejido [indigenous community where land is owned communally] “El Carrizal” in the Chiapas municipality of Ocosingo, the member organizations of FNLS have been intimidated and assaulted by armed groups under the control of Javier Ortega Villatoro – including Los Petules and the CMPECH [the Popular Movement Coordinating Committee of the State of Chiapas] – that have terrorized local residents through assassinations and disappearances.
In the same way, FNLS representatives added, communal land owners in the indigenous area of Venustiano Carranza have been victims of a series of unjustified homicides and imprisonments, which local authorities misleadingly describe as simple “domestic conflicts” between farmers in order to protect the armed groups truly responsible for these acts.
Meanwhile, in the Tila municipality of Petalcingo, paramilitary groups affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary (PRI) party and the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico (PVEM) are squaring off with each other, at a time when both are also responsible for the violent acts against members of FNLS.
Carmen Hernández Pérez, resident of Venustiano Carranza and member of the Emiliano Zapata Farmer’s Organization, lamented that in recent years there has been at least 36 murders linked to these armed groups, without any subsequent investigation by authorities whatsoever.
Rio Florido community resident Francisco Santiz further added that only a few days ago, the paramilitaries of El Carrizal had tried to carry out forced kidnappings and assassinations in the municipal seat of Ocosingo. Spanish original