Cover image: Press conference held in the capital city of Chiapas to denounce irregularities in the legal process of the Zapatista.
José Díaz Gómez, Indigenous Ch’ol, support base of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), has been imprisoned and accused of violent robbery. The Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (FRAYBA) pointed out that Díaz, imprisoned in CERSS No. 17, “El Bambú”, in the municipality of Catazajá, in the north of Chiapas, is the victim of criminalization accused of a crime that hasn’t been substantiated.
FRAYBA has documented the human rights violations carried out by Chiapas state police during José Díaz’s detention: executing an illegal and arbitrary detention; engaging in torture; engaging in cruel, inhumane, and degrading conduct; forced disappearance; and holding someone incommunicado.
The organizations demand that the Mexican state immediately free the Zapatista who has been held prisoner for nearly one year and nine months without a conviction. On July 8, the presentation of evidence was completed which will be followed by a verdict from the court.
“The evidence presented against José Díaz is inconsistent and lacks credibility. These details make evident the deficient investigation and lack of fairness in the judicial process,” asserted FRAYBA in a press conference held on July 29 in the capital city of Chiapas, Tuxtla Gutiérrez.
Jorge Luis López, FRAYBA’s lawyer, detailed that evidence presented by the public prosecutor is made up of four parts, “and none of them directly link José to the crime; we would expect that the judge issues an acquittal.”
The lawyer emphasized that one of the pieces of evidence, testimony of the supposed victim, was full of contradictions during the trial. Furthermore, the witness presented at the hearing confirmed that he does not know the accused. The other two pieces of evidence, two reports presented by the State Attorney General’s Office (a field forensics report and a crime scene inspection), “neither of them directly links José to the crime,” emphasizes López.
The human rights center has documented the investigation process carried out by the public prosecutor’s office, of which it assures, “is deficient because it does not comply with the requirement of being objective, nor does it have evidence to link José to the crime.” The human rights center even warns that given the accumulation of irregularities and the lack of solid evidence against José Díaz, just like four other Zapatistas who have arrest warrants out or them, are at risk of being unjustly convicted.
FRAYBA argues that the imprisonment of José Díaz is politically motivated, part of a pattern of fabricating guilt against Indigenous community organizers, emphasizing that “the prosecution didn’t carry out a legal, scientific, and objective investigation.”
“The Judge of Catazajá must consider not only the crime of robbery and an investigation lacking authenticity, but also the situation of political criminalization in the case of human rights defenders belonging to Indigenous communities,” FRAYBA says in a bulletin.
According to López, as part of José Díaz’s defense, the human rights center has met with judicial officials in Chiapas. Before the officials, they requested a change in the pre-trial detention status, arguing that there is justification to free the Zapatista so he can continue his legal process in freedom. This request was denied.
They have also appealed to international organizations like the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights where they also solicited a change in his pre-trial status because of prison conditions and overcrowding in CERSS No. 17 which are inhumane and violating the human rights of the Zapatista.
Prison in Chiapas, Inhumane and Degrading
As part of its documentation, FRAYBA assures that there exists a pattern of human rights violations of people detained in the prisons of Chiapas. Among them they have registered acts of torture, cruel, inhumane, and degrading conduct, as well as conditions of overcrowding, all of which are predominant in these prisons.
CERSS No. 17, in the municipality of Catazajá, is particularly overcrowded. With a maximum capacity of 120 people, the prison currently houses 478 inmates, and maintains practices like holding 18 people in cells that measure nine square meters.
“This situation has increased the risk of infectious diseases, worsened by compromised immune systems. We also note the presence of multiple diseases reflected in skin rashes, symptoms of fever, dizziness, vomiting, and lumps of different sizes, among other side effects…,” denounces the human rights center. It also emphasizes that the conditions worsened for lack of medical attention and lack of disease monitoring to intervene and mitigate the risks of contagion among the prison population.
FRAYBA says that the response from authorities is to forcefully and unjustly transfer the population to other prisons “putting their lives and well-being at risk.”
The litigator explains that due to the enormous number of cases, the public defenders and judges are overwhelmed with work, which doesn’t allow them time to give specific attention to each case. “What this generates is that an Indigenous person who doesn’t know how to read, who doesn’t know how to write, and who doesn’t know the conditions of our penal system, obviously will be imprisoned for more time,” the lawyer points out.
López explains that there is a two-year term limit in which a person can remain in pre-trial detention: “Precisely, before the two years is up, they accelerate the entire process so that they can give a sentence as soon as possible. The concern is that he will be convicted.”
More than 50 organizations from Chiapas, Mexico and around the world called for the immediate freedom of the Zapatista and called for actions in the context of the coming ruling, which is scheduled to be announced on August 6.
Indigenous peoples of Perú who pertain to the Asociación Interetnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (AIDESEP) have declared a state of permanent emergency after the tragic assassination of Mariano Isacama Feliciano, leader of the Kakataibo people.
This action was taken in response to the inaction of the government in the face of the increasing violence faced by Indigenous people protecting their ancestral territories, says AIDESEP.
Isacama was from the Indigenous community of Nativa de Puerto Azul, located in the province of Manu, Madre de Dios, in the Peruvian Amazon, and was found dead on the banks of the Yurac river after going missing twenty-four days ago.
The Indigenous leader had alerted the community and human rights organizations of previous threats against him prior to his disappearance. According to the autopsy report, his death was caused by a bullet wound, as well as showing signs of torture.
Isacama had sustained a persistent struggle in defense of the Amazon and against illegal mining and logging activities in the region, alongside the communities that pertain to the AIDESEP.
AIDESEP is an organization which unites Indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon through its nine regional base organizations which have expressed profound discontent for the lack of justice for victims and the continued impunity surrounding these crimes.
The Indigenous Amazonian communities have announced that, with the lack of justice and security provided by the state, they themselves will prepare to take other measures. The communities have announced that they’ve been obligated to exercise their right to legitimate self-defense and “utilize the means in the same proportion with which they attack us,” with complete responsibility falling on “the government for the consequences,” says the communique.
La Federación Nativa de Comunidades Kakataibo also warns that a new practice of organized crime in the region is to let the bodies decompose, so as to disappear evidence and delay investigations.
With this case, the National Coordinator of Human Rights registers twenty-five environmental defenders and Indigenous leaders who have been disappeared and murdered since 2020. Five of the victims were from the Kakataibo people. In 2021, two members of the community were disappeared and their whereabouts are still unknown. The violence against Indigenous peoples has expanded in recent years in the Amazon regions of Ucayali, Huánuco, Pasco and Junín.
Cover image: The communal guard of Ostula is a voluntary service provided to the community. Each member is elected in the encargaturas and the service lasts one year. Photo: Regina López
By Santiago Navarro F and Regina López
She is known as La Mexicana. She is an Indigenous Nahua woman, over fifty years old. In her firm stare she holds like a secret the most decisive moments in the last fifteen years of her life “doing resistance” as she says. She’s learned how to overcome the threats from organized crime on her lands. First it was the Familia Michoacana Cartel, she says, then it was the Knights Templar Cartel, and now the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
Her name is Teresa Regis Nicolás. She returned from the United States fifteen years ago. After the death of her father, she returned to her native land with the legacy that he left her, to struggle for the communal lands that belong to the Indigenous people of Santa María Ostula, in municipality of Aquila, located in the state of Michoacán. These lands extend to the pacific coast, in the western part of Mexico.
It was 2009. It had only been three months since the community had carried out an armed recuperation of a fraction of their lands. Today, Teresa, her children, and more than 70 Indigenous families live on the recuperated territory. The lands are now known as Xayakalan. Prior to the recuperation, they were in the hands of landowners who had acquired property titles and were connected to organized crime. The Indigenous people have titles for their communal lands from a presidential decree from 1964, and today the primordial titles from the 1700’s that prove the land to be theirs.
Xayakalan became village number 24 that of Ostula, what the local people call encargaturas, similar to municipal agencies. “I wasn’t involved in the recuperation of the lands. But three months later, I was one of the first eight families that settled here with a small home. Since then, we have resisted,” remembers La Mexicana.
Community members recount that since 1997 they had been preparing these lands to be planted, before they were taken over by landowners.
In June 2003 they decided for the first time to physically establish themselves on the lands, constructing a series of adobe homes. In September of that same year, the homes were torn down. In 2004, the landowners sued the Indigenous people for usurping private property. “Afterwards the court ruled in favor of the landowners,” shares Evaristo Domínguez Ramos, a community member of Ostula.
In 2008, the Agrarian Court of Colima decided that these lands—highly productive and with a paradise-like beach—were property of those who had filed the lawsuits. According to the community members, these people were “linked at that time to the Knights Templar Cartel.”
From that moment on, for a year and two months, in silence, members of the communal council of Ostula began to organize a response. In general assemblies and collective meetings, each one of the 23 encargaturas were consulted about the idea of taking action to recuperate the lands. Afterwards, it was decided to name the lands Xayakalan. “That is how we began to struggle in defense. The decision was made in April 2008, we had to recuperate these lands,” shares Evaristo.
The brave action to recuperate the lands was organized by community members who maintained their plans secret, until the day of the recuperation when dozens of Indigenous men and women participated. “On June 29, 2009, the lands were retaken. It has not been easy, it has cost many lives,” he adds.
During these years of struggle, forty-four Indigenous people have been killed, and according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the State of Michoacan, between 2009 and 2014, there have been five disappearances. Among the disappeared is the 62-year-old communal lands commissioner, Francisco de Asís Manuel, who was kidnapped from his home in the village of Palma Sola.
It has been fifteen years now that the Nahua community has had control of their lands. On June 28 and 29, they celebrated the anniversary, remembering the dead and disappeared. They danced and sang accompanied by solidarity groups who have supported their struggle. Women and men also shared bits and pieces of memories of the most difficult moments they’ve lived through.
Communal authorities of the 24 encargaturas sharing what they remember of June 29, some of them children at that time, now have cargos authorized by the community. Photo: Regina LópezThose in charge of the organization of the 24 encargaturas participated in the celebration of the recuperation of the lands and the foundation of Xayakalan. Photo: Santiago Navarro F.
One of the participants at the event remembered that during the recuperation, on the Michoacán coast, it was crab season. It is common for the local people to go to the beach to collect crabs that come out during the rains. On the day of the recuperation, “We came across an armed commando who said to us, ´You Indian sons of bitches, there are no crabs here!´ Moments after, they shot toward us with ak-47 assault rifles. There were three elderly folks with us. One man stayed behind. He said to the armed men, ´kill me if you want. I’m not afraid´.”
This campesino from La Labor, who participated in the recuperation of the land recounts, “We were the first to arrive. We held our ground for fifteen days, until there was no more food. Women arrived with only charalitos (small fish), and fifteen years later, we continue the struggle,” shares the Indigenous man.
Teresa lived the everyday experience after the recuperation. A lump develops in her throat, she gathers her courage and explains, “We’ve been through difficult times, sad times, frightful times, but also beautiful times, like the mutual aid in the community. At first, we were many families, and at a certain moment the resistance was weakened to the point where there were only eight families. Today it is truly a community,” she shares while letting off a smile seeing the children that have been born on these recuperated lands, which now count more than double the population of the adults.”
Teresa, like the rest of the women in Xayakalan, is cheerful because it is a day of celebration, the fifteenth anniversary of the recuperation of the lands. The children run and blend in with the landscape near the ocean. The wind that brings the waves to the beach, also brings the smell of food to the entire community. “It is time to celebrate that we are still alive. To remember our dead, so that we never give up the struggle,” says La Mexicana.
In the new community of Xayakalan, the only way to survive was to make life. New couples emerged who decided to struggle together, having children while resisting constant attacks from organized crime. Today there are more than 70 families who live together in the community, their children go to the new school, and they’ve also built a church. Everyone has a house and two parcels to farm.
Teresa explains with pride, “My son is from here, he was born here, his umbilical cord is buried here. There are now more than 150 children in the community. We have the responsibility of teaching them the extension of our lands, just as our grandparents did. I’ve taken my son all the way to the peripheries of Ostula, so he will never forget,” she shares.
On August 11, 2023, the community received a judicial notification of a “forced rectification of limits” of the lands. This would imply the entrance of governmental personal to rectify the properties of those who had filed lawsuits—the landowners—with the latent intervention of the National Guard and the Military.
This ruling was emitted by Judge Arturo Bernal Lastiri, who has also been accused by the Indigenous Nahuas of San Miguel de Aquila, of supporting an unknown lands commissioner, who is allowing the exploitation of minerals in the region. They mobilized for his removal in 2022 with a protest at the offices of the Local Agrarian Court 48 of Colima.
Before this legal resolution was handed down, there was a prolonged legal process lasting a decade, from 2009-2019. This legal process began at the time of the recuperation of the 1,200 hectares that today they have converted into Xayakalan. At the time, in 2009, the court ruled in favor of re-ratifying measurements, taking into account fixed landmarks, like the ocean, mountains, and rivers.
Despite the addition of the new elements of evidence—including the primordial titles which date back to the 1700s, and which detail the limits of the territory of Ostula extending beyond the disputed strip—the court ruled in favor of the landowners. They retook old measurements, which “are wrong”, says the lawyer of the community, Carlos Gonzales.
Then arrives February 2023, following a new request from Ostula for a review of the sentence handed down in 2019, and another appeal. By August 2023, Judge Bernal Lastiri once again ruled in favor of the landowners, ordering the forced intervention in Xayakalan.
Jeronimo Flores, member of the communal council, explains: “We mobilized and they never came to execute the order. We imagine that they realized our organization is very solid.”
Indeed, it is. In August 2023, more than 600-armed Indigenous people were deployed both inside Xayakalan as well as outside its boundaries, to impede any intervention into their territory. Afterwards, “the court decided to suspend the forced execution of the order,” with an amparo numbered 463/2023, explains the community’s lawyer to Avispa.
However, this amparo only temporarily suspends the intervention until a new ruling is handed down. If they do not get a response in favor of Ostula at this court, they will have to look for options at the international level. “Regardless, nobody will remove us from Xayakalan,” says Teresa, who has been threatened with death and directly harassed by organized crime.
She explains that the community is more organized than ever: “We are safe because we have our communal guard. Here, not the army, nor the marines, nor any governmental force enters into our community without permission.”
State armed forces cannot enter these territories, unless “the community permits it. That is what was agreed upon in an assembly. Instead of helping, they come to trample on our communities, like the child who was assassinated. There are antecedents. In 2011, the army was working directly with organized crime,” adds Jeronimo.
It is important for the community to have their own communal guard, people from the community, family members and neighbors, who know the communal statutes, the territory, and the internal community dynamics. Photo: Santiago Navarro F.At the limits of the community there is a community organized security checkpoint, guarded by the communal guard, and also by community members who daily rotate at the position. Photo: Santiago Navarro F.
Autonomous Security
One of the principal strengths of this process of resistance is its communal guard and its capacity for rapid mobilization. The community member Evaristo details that “communal guard members are named by each encargatura in their assemblies,” each one is armed and prepared for whatever type of aggression.
The council member Jerónimo shares that, in case of a crisis or emergency, “all the guards of each encargatura are activated. We all have to get involved. It is an obligation to defend ourselves. We’ve already lived through moments of crisis, and we don’t want them to happen again.” Teresa was the first woman to be named by the new community of Xayakalan as representative of its inhabitants. “I was appointed the head of community security in 2018. You are the one organizing the security of the community, yet everyone participates. If there is a problem, a collective work day, or even a party, we resolve it collectively,” says Teresa, who did one year of service and afterwards integrated into the rest of the community activities, like taking turns accompanying the security checkpoint with the communal guard.
The guards stopped existing in 1999, leaving just the state police in charge of security. “The community said, we need to organize our own community police because the situation is going to get difficult. Afterwards they were renamed communal guards. With them we recuperated the lands and now they watch over the security of Ostula,” says Evaristo.
It is well known by inhabitants of the surrounding communities that this zone was occupied by the Knights Templar cartel as a base of operations. On this beach arrived boats to unload drugs.
After retaking the lands, they threatened Teresa. “I remember that a man they called Chalano (Prisiliano Corona Sánchez) threatened me with a rifle to my back. I just waited to see what would happen. It was a very difficult time, the community had been weakened,” she explains
In addition to Chalano, community members who withheld their names for security reasons, accuse Iturbide Alejo, known as El Turbinas, and Margarita Pérez, known as La Usurpadora, for threatening to kill Trinidad de la Cruz Crisóstomo, alias Don Trino. He was afterwards assassinated in December 2011.
In addition to organized crime, the area where Xayakalan is located is part of the Regional Plan for Integral Tourist Development of the Coast of Michoacan; a tourist corridor seeking investments to build resorts for national and international tourism.
Photo: Santiago Navarro F.The paradise-like beach of Xayakalan, which before its recuperation was used by Narcos, today can be enjoyed by the inhabitants of Ostula. Photo: Santiago Navarro F.Youth organize soccer matches at sunset on the recuperated beach in Xayakalan. Photo: Regina López
According to the strategy presented by the Secretariat of Tourism during the administration of Felipe Calderon 2006-2012, where the lands have been recuperated there were plans for a real estate development project, golf courses, stores, an aquatic park, museums, night life, and restaurants.
The Avispa Team also reviewed the data of active mining concessions, solicited from the Secretariat of Economy. We found that just in Aquila alone, where Ostula is located with its twenty-four encargatures, there exists fifty-three mining concessions. At least sixteen belong to Las Encinas S.A. de C.V., property of the steel company Ternium, S.A. Ternium is the steel and metallurgical company with the highest turnover rates in Mexico in 2022, mainly from the sale of steel.
This company is directly linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and with the disappearances of the lawyer Ricardo Lagunes Gasca and a community leader of Aquila, Antonio Díaz Valencia. According to an investigation carried out by the media outlet, A Donde Van los Desaparecidos, these disappearances are linked “with the social and legal struggle they (the activists) have maintained against Ternium since 2019.”
This same cartel maintains constant attacks on the encargatura La Cofradía, where there are at least two mining concessions: 223431 belonging to Ternium, and 217537 belonging to Servicios Minerometalurgicos de Occidente, S.A. de C.V. which together total more than 2,500 hectares.
In the municipality of Aquila, Ternium has more than 147,000 hectares of land concessions, according to information solicited from the Secretariat of Economy.
The lands of this Indigenous community are rich in minerals, wood, and other natural resources. This wealth is under dispute between different organized crime groups. Through years of struggle, “At all times we have been on constant alert,” says Jeronimo.
Don Evaristo explains that the communal guard has to always be on alert “Because our security depends on them. We have to teach the youth because their participation is necessary, so that they can provide their services to the community.”
“We already endured years of attacks from different cartels, and we aren’t going to let down the guard. We will continue organizing and resisting, defending our lands,” adds Jeronimo.
For Teresa, it is important to strengthen the organization, “Because if we are united, they can’t do anything to us. The organizing must never end, we have to provide an example to our children, grandchildren, and all the kids, so that the organizing never comes to an end,” she shares at the celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of Xayakalan.
Just a couple days after the anniversary festivities, the community denounced in a communique that “the Jalisco New Generation Cartel” attacked “with brutal violence the Indigenous community of Santa María Ostula,” principally the encargatura of La Cofradía. This attack was more aggressive than previous ones, with drones and high caliber weapons used against houses, a school, and common spaces during the night of July 3. The attacks have been constant and the government doesn’t seem to care. For this reason, there is a saying on the murals and signs at the community organized security checkpoint: “In Ostula the struggle for security is permanent.”
Photo: Regina LópezMural of the community security checkpoint of Xayakalan, where in addition to the communal guard, you can see Don Trino, one of the people who advocated for the recuperation and who was assassinated on December 6, 2011, on these very lands. Photo. Regina López
Cover image: Displaced families from the community of Buena Vista are sheltered under a tarp roof at the entrance to the highway leading to Santa Rosita, another Maya Q’eqchi’ community that is also at risk of eviction. Photo: Juan Bautista Xol/ Prensa Comunitaria
Following the police operation in May of this year that resulted in the eviction of thirty Maya Q’eqchi’ families from the community of Buena Vista, on the north side of Lake Izabal, in Guatemala, there are now nine communities in the same region of the Polochic Valley who are living beneath the threat of forced displacement.
Indigenous community authorities have criticized the Public Prosecutor’s Office’s intention of enforcing eviction orders. The communities denounce that the evictions are “are being driven by officials and land owners” related to the oil palm industry, who have taken land in the region from communities both to the north and south of the lake.
The media project Prensa Comunitaria reported that during the eviction of the thirty families, in addition to police officials, Luis Fernando Arriaza Migoya and members of his private security team were also present. Arriaza owns oil palm monocrops which supply the Naturaceites company, which processes and commercializes palm oil for transnational companies.
Eviction of families in the community of Buena Vista. Photos: Juan Bautista Col/ Prensa Comunitaria
According to local media, during discussions between the evicted populations and the Presidential Commission on Human Rights of Guatemala, officials notified that there are now nine communities at risk of eviction in the region: Plan Grande, Agrario El Tunico, Chapin Abajo, Chinebal, Las Nubes, Lote 6, Semococh, and Qotoxha of the municipality of El Estor, Izabal, as well as Santa Lucia de Panzós, in the department of Alta Verapaz. In total, there are more than 1,500 people at risk of forced displacement.
Among the thirty families who have already been displaced there are pregnant women, infants, elders, and adults from the Buena Vista community. They are currently living in an improvised encampment beneath the trees.
The camp is on land belonging to the community of Santa Rosita, which is also in danger of eviction. There is a judicial resolution ordering their eviction on June 26, which has since been rescheduled for August 28.
Photos: Juan Bautista Xol/ Prensa Comunitaria
“It is unjust that they continue committing these violent acts, many women and children suffer from health problems. Today, we see the result of an eviction. Families are left abandoned and the children without an opportunity to go to school,” comments Gabriel Pacham, ancestral authority of El Estor.
Between seven and nine displaced people have warrants out for their arrest for the supposed crimes of aggravated usurpation and damage of natural patrimony. They are accused of cutting down oil palms. Although some people have been convicted, they have appealed with legal assistance from human rights organizations.
At a press conference at the end of June, the Council of Ancestral Authorities of the Q’eqchi’ people denounced the different evictions of communities in the Polochic Valley, demanding that the Bernardo Arévalo government guarantee security for the Buena Vista families. These families have inhabited the lands since 2015, when they were displaced by a natural disaster. Since then, they’ve moved into the Tz’inté Estate, a territory that Maya Q’eqchi’ people reclaim as part of their ancestral territories.
Racism
The Council of Ancestral Authorities of the Q’eqchi’ people also denounced state authorities: Judge Sandra Nineth Ayala (who ordered the eviction of Buena Vista and is pushing other evictions), the governor of Izabal, Carlos Tenas, and the municipal authority of El Estor, Genro Ico Cholom. These authorities have been making agreements regarding eviction operations without communicating with the communities, something required by eviction protocol in Guatemala.
“We don’t know what the plan is. This is extreme, and it puts our lives at risk. They want to evict us without a clear humanitarian plan,” said ancestral authorities at a press conference. In addition, they say that it “racism and discrimination, because blaming us is devoid of all human sensibility, claiming that we are a criminal group, ignoring that we possess all the qualities of an organized community that reproduces life in an organized manner.”
On Thursday, July 4, families of Plan Grande reported that workers of the El Murciélago Estate, owned by Miguel Ángel Arriaza Migoya, threatened to evict thirty-eight families from the community.
In response, the Committee of Campesina Unity (CUC) reported that the communities have filed a complaint at the Interamerican Court of Human Rights, in Washington, to solicit protective measures to provide security to the dispossessed. “We do not want more criminalization, persecution, and eviction,” sustains the campesina organization, which is also pursuing an appeal to prevent the eviction of the families of Buena Vista and Santa Rosita.
Threats
Pedro Cuc, ancestral authority of the community of Chapín Abajo, explained to Avispa Midia that he has heard about a possible eviction of his community and the neighboring community of Chinebal, which could occur in the following days. They are still awaiting an official notification from authorities.
“If they want to enter with force, we aren’t going to back down either, the organization is on alert,” he asserts, assuring that Naturaceites S.A. is responsible for the eviction. The company is owned by Swiss-German businessman, Juan Maegli Müller.
He regrets that in Guatemala, with the power and influence of agroindustry, complaints from the Maya Q’eqchi’ population go unheeded. “Because the judicial body is connected to the companies, both the Supreme Court of Justice and the Constitutionality Court,” he explains. There is omission from the National Civil Police and the Public Prosecutor’s Office when indigenous people file complaints against the violence. It is through that violence that the Maegli Müller family has taken over this land.
The community of La Cofradía, one of the 23 population centers that make up the Indigenous town of Santa María Ostula, in Michoacán, was under siege this Wednesday, July 3, from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). Everything was calm in the community before they were attacked by drones and high caliber weaponry.
Since July 1, the criminal group has carried out a series of coordinated attacks on strategic points, specifically where the communal guard is located. The Indigenous people, in a communique, notified that “Today, July 3, since the morning, drone explosions have been heard, as well as shots from high caliber weaponry, in the hills surrounding the Cofradía community.”
Photo taken by the community on July 3
As evening fell, residents were informed that members of the CJNG were approaching the population areas. “Immediately the attacks began on houses and schools. From then on, there were drone explosions every 40 minutes. This time the CJNG attacked the population, sending groups of around 50 criminals each to surround the unarmed population,” denounced community members.
The authorities of the community released an alert directed at the three levels of government, yet they point out that, the government has “ignored the call to dismantle the criminal group.”
The demand of the community is clear: the immediate dismantling of the CJNG and the capture of its leaders and accomplices, including known figures like Cemeí Verdía Zepeda and Leonardo Bravo, among others. They also demand “an end to the protection of the cartel provided by corrupt state officials and military commanders,” they state in their communique.
This past July 1, the daughter of Verdía Zepeda was assassinated, for which members of the community have been falsely blamed. It was then when the criminal group began the harassment.
In response to the violence, the communal guard of Santa María Ostula, together with self-defense groups of Aquila and Coahuayana, announced the strengthening of their actions to eradicate the criminal presence in the region. They demand from all three levels of government the punishment of those responsible for the assassinations of more than 40 community leaders and the alive presentation of the disappeared.
Faced with omission from the authorities, the Indigenous community reaffirmed their right to self-determination and autonomy, demanding the guarantees necessary for the functioning of its communal guard and the security of its residents.
As the conflict escalates, the community persists in their call for national and international solidarity, seeking to put an end to the impunity and to ensure a future of peace and freedom for generations to come.
Cover image: Indigenous communities have organized protests against the imposition of the Interoceanic Corridor in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec between Oaxaca and Veracruz.
Land and environmental defenders of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec have suffered at least 226 acts of aggression in the last three years related to the Interoceanic Corridor, a megaproject being pushed by the Andrés Manuel López Obrador administration in the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz. The investigation was carried out by 23 social and human rights organizations gathered in a civil observation mission.
Within the period of investigation, between May 2021 and May 2024, the civil mission registered 72 attacks in total, in which 226 acts of aggression were committed. Among them, they documented intimidation, harassment, threats, physical aggression, criminalization, property damage, defamation, arbitrary detention, stigmatization, forced displacement, homicide, forced dispossession, undue use of force, raids, theft, and disappearance.
“There is criminalization, the threat of being incarcerated, of perhaps being disappeared or assassinated. That always has been present for us…waiting to see what happens, to see what they are going to do to us,” explains an Indigenous Binnizá land defender from San Blas Atempa, Oaxaca.
The victims are in the majority members of Indigenous groups and communities. The organizations registered 66 of the 72 attacks documented were carried out against Indigenous Mixe (Ayuuk) and Zapotec (Binnizá) peoples.
Carlos Beas, member of the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Northern Zone of the Isthmus (UCIZONI), an organization that is part of the civil mission, sustained in a press conference on Thursday, June 27, that there was an increase in acts of aggression in the last year and a half.
For him, there were two elements that coincide with this increase. “On the one hand, there is the transfer of command of the Interoceanic Corridor from civil control (until September 2023 run by Rafael Marín Mollinedo) to the (Secretariat of the) Navy,” he sustains.
According to Beas, the change in command has caused a series of problems. An example he cites is that for “many communities that allowed the works of the corridor in exchange for some development or housing program, the government, and in particular the Secretariat of the Navy (SEMAR), has not wanted to recognize those agreements.”
On the other hand, together with the arrival of the Navy as the entity responsible for the development project, in December 2022, Salomón Jara (of the MORENA party) took power as governor of the state of Oaxaca. “The highest number of aggressions began in January 2023, acquiring more intensity mainly from January 2024 onward,” he maintains.
Luz Coral Hernández, member of Territorios Diversos para la Vida, another one of the organizations that is part of the civil mission, explained during the press conference that the data presented by the organizations is in reality a reference to the magnitude of violence that communities and peoples who defend their land in the region are facing. "It is only the basic minimum of the true number of acts of aggression that are being carried out against peoples and communities,” they say.
State Agents
Those responsible for carrying out the human rights violations are in their majority agents of the state, who participated in 66% of the acts of aggression. Private agents follow at 30%. And 4% are not identified. “In 26 of the 72 attacks there was participation from one or multiple elements of military-tinged public security forces,” says Coral Hernández.
Social organizations count 226 acts of aggression against land defenders in the context of the imposition of the Interoceanic Corridor.
The organizations highlight acts of aggression carried out by government agencies responsible for the protection of agrarian communities, as is the case of the National Agrarian Registry and the Environmental Attorney.
Furthermore, acts of aggression by authorities in charge of investigation and administration of justice both at the federal as well as the local level—federal and state attorney general’s offices, along with federal and state judicial power.
Justice
Today there are 12 open investigations, at both the federal and state levels, related to 55 land defenders. Furthermore, they have registered 20 arrests of land defenders, with 19 of them being freed.
“We are highly concerned about the use of the justice system to prevent the labor of human rights defenders. This is a tendency that is maintained in a recurrent and systematic manner,” alerts Nataniel Hernández, of the RED TDT.
In at least 28 of the attacks documented, the impacts of the violence also affected children, wives, mothers, and fathers of land defenders who were victims at the specific moment of the event.
Gender-based violence against Mixe women land defenders was also identified. “Through physical aggression and intimidation, when they were attacked by elements of SEMAR, or their labor as land defenders was questioned due to stereotypes of gender roles, regarding care and domestic work,” says the report of the organizations.
What is being experienced in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, assured the organizations, is an accelerated and imposed process, with a climate of intimidation and generalized military securitization, with the dispossession of lands and territories, with the imposition of forms of life, as well as the plunder of natural resources: “All of that has meant an unacceptable reality for communities and organizations of the Isthmus.”
