Indigenous Maya Q’eqchi’ Denounce Eviction Threats of New Communities in El Estor

Por

11 July, 2024

^{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.

Alert! Santa María Ostula Under Attack Again from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel

Por

Avispa

7 July, 2024

^{Cover image from the archive of Cuartoscuro}

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.

Interoceanic Corridor: 226 Acts of Aggression Registered Against Land Defenders in the Last Three Years

Por

Renata Bessi

2 July, 2024

^{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.

You might be interested in – In Defense of the Isthmus: The Persistent Struggle Against the Interoceanic Corridor

Women and Children

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.”

Indigenous Council in Michoacán Protests for the Freedom of Detained Forest Defender

Por

Sare Frabes

25 June, 2024

^{Cover image: Members of the Supreme Indigenous Council of Michoacán mobilize to demand the freedom of María Cruz Paz, who has been detained for two weeks on what they say are fabricated charges.}

On Monday, June 17, hundreds of Indigenous Purépechas, members of the Supreme Indigenous Council of Michoacán (CSIM), blockaded highways in different parts of the state to demand the freedom of María Cruz Paz Zamora, who they say is a political prisoner.

Paz Zamora, delegate of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), was detained on June 5 by ministerial police of Michoacán, and taken to prison in Uruapan.

^{Members of the Supreme Indigenous Council of Michoacán mobilize to demand the freedom of María Cruz Paz, who has been detained for two weeks on what they say are fabricated charges.}

The CSIM—made up of civil, communal, and traditional authorities of 70 Purépecha, Nahua, Otomí, and Mazahua communities—says that the Michoacán State Public Prosecutor’s Office has held her in custody for the crime of forced disappearance. The Indigenous organization says that she is a victim of criminalization due to her work as a defender of the environment, territory, and Indigenous autonomy.

According to the Indigenous council, Paz Zamora wasn’t offered any explanation for her detention, which occurred while she was traveling to the city of Morelia to attend a meeting with state officials.

^{María Cruz Paz Zamora, resident of the Purépecha community of Ocumicho.}

Paz Zamora is a member of the community of Ocumicho, in the municipality of Cherapan, where she is recognized for her work in defense of Purépecha culture, and for the autonomy of the community. Furthermore, the Supreme Indigenous Council of Michoacan points out that she was working on extensive reforestation projects in her community, which has brought her face to face with illegal loggers and agro-industrial avocado producers in the region.

The National indigenous Congress (CNI) explains that the Mexican State and the Michoacán State Public Prosecutor’s Office repress and criminalize those who oppose the irritational depredation of the forests and the sale of ancestral lands. They too demand the immediate freedom of Paz Zamora.

Antecedents of Violence

According to the CSIM spokesperson, Pavel Guzmán Ulianov, the imprisonment of the Purépecha organizer can only be understood by reviewing the history and context of the Indigenous community of Ocumicho—a community that has defended their ancestral territory, and which, during the last 40 years, has suffered a series of aggressions.

During a press conference carried out in the capital city of Morelia, Ulianov listed several violent acts committed against the Indigenous community, including the assassination of the communal lands secretary, Prudencio Ortíz Alonso, on May 31, 2020, during an attack where the communal lands representative was also injured.

Also noteworthy is the disappearance of the coordinator of the communal governance council and the director of Radio Indígena Ocumicho, Esteban Cruz Rosas, on April 28, 2022, as he was leaving the radio station. According to the CSIM, thanks to the timely mobilization, Cruz was found alive.

In addition, he explained that on November 11, 2022, the community was attacked by an armed group, and on December 10 of that same year, Pedro Pascual Cruz was assassinated, who was the coordinator of the communal guard of Ocumicho.

“All these cases have been denounced in time and form in the Michoacan Public Prosecutor’s Office. However, in this institution the paradox of impunity prevails, the guilty go free and the innocent are imprisoned,” explained the spokesperson.

^{Paz Zamora’s mother, who was also present in the demand for the release of her daughter, says that she is accused on fabricated evidence.}

^{Press conference carried out in Morelia to demand the immediate freedom of María Cruz Paz Zamora.}

Cruz Rosas, who also participated in the press conference, says that the aggressions against Ocumicho have occurred in spite of having officially asked for assistance from state and federal authorities. “We are marginalized, we have never been attended to,” accused the coordinator.

Cruz says that the detention of Paz Zamora is the consequence of the fabrication of crimes on part of the Michoacán Public Prosecutor’s Office, to “find a scapegoat” to blame in the case of the disappearance of two community members of Santa Cruz Tanaco, Israel Vargas Jerónimo and Oscar Vargas Campos, which occurred on January 3, 2024.

The coordinator of the communal government of Ocumicho assures that Paz Zamora remains imprisoned for the accusation from a protected witness, of which, says the coordinator, is an illegal logger who accuses the forest defender of being behind the kidnapping of the community members.

“How is a criminal going to have more voice and vote than a person that has been in charge of 20 men who guard the forest?”, Cruz emphatically asked in front of the media. “Maybe that is why she is being attacked, because here in Michoacán, there is nobody to defend the forests,” he said.

Michoacán: Indigenous Communities Under Siege from Organized Crime

Por

Sare Frabes

24 June, 2024

Cover image: Residents of the Nahua community of Santa María Ostula. Photo: Regina López

Through a statement released Saturday, June 15, Indigenous Nahuas of Santa María Ostula denounced new attacks against their community, taking place within a context of escalating violence including armed invasions and assassinations occurring since 2023. These attacks have continued without any response from state or federal authorities.

On June 13, a group of 30 heavily armed members of Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), attacked a community member of the Encargatura de la Cofradia—one of the 23 populations that make up Ostula—in the municipality of Aquila, on the Michoacán sierra coast.

On this occasion, the armed group shot at a community member who was working in the fields, who was only able to survive by seeking refuge in the security checkpoint set up by the Communal Guard of Ostula due to the constant attacks from the CJNG.

This checkpoint was installed after February 6 when the same population suffered a violent attack from the criminal group, forcing residents to suspend work and school activities for weeks due to the seriousness of the armed aggressions.

There were also attacks at the end of March and beginning of April carried out against the neighboring communities of Coahuayana and Chinicuila. At that time, hundreds of men from Colima used high caliber guns, as well as explosives and drones, in an attempt to take control of the territories.

With the response from self-defense groups and communal guards of the municipalities of Cuahuayana and Aquila, they were able to stop the advance of the criminal group. However, local journalists report that the CJNG has retaken control in the localities of Palos Marías, El Órgano and Zapotan, “causing terror in the communities and displacement,” shares local media.

Assassinations, Disappearances

The armed aggressions don’t stop there. In the month of May, residents of Ostula denounced the assassination of the community member Antonio Regis Nicolás, while he was traveling with his family to the Encargatura de la Mina of La Providencia.

^{Antonio Regis Nicolás, community member of Ostula, assassinated in May. Photos: Comunicación Ostula}

At that moment, the community denounced that the government, both state and federal, knows about the violence in the region and the aggressions that the community of Ostula is facing. “However, they have refused to take active measures to provide protection to the populations of the region and particularly to the families of our community in the face of the worsening violence of the CJNG,” they sustained in a communique.

The community had demanded the dismantling of the CJNG, as well as the “end of the protection that corrupt police officers and sergeants provide to the cartel.” They also remember the assassination of Lorenzo Forylán de la Cruz Ríos, Isaul Nemesio Zambrano, Miguel Estrada Reyes, and Rolando Magno Zambrano, members of the Communal Guard assassinated in 2023.

The Nahua community members also demand the return of Antonio Díaz and Ricardo Lagunes. Díaz, a professor and community leader of San Miguel de Aquila, and Lagunes, a lawyer and human rights defender, have been missing since January 15, 2023, when they were traveling between Michoacán and Colima after participating in a community assembly.

Both were in charge of the legal defense of the population of Aquila, to guarantee free elections of communal authorities and the fulfillment of agreements with the mining company Las Encinas, property of Ternium.

The violent events took place just days before the Nahua community celebrated the 15^th anniversary of the recuperation of more than 1,000 hectares of communal lands in what is now the Encargatura de San Diego Xayacalán.

In 2009, the Indigenous Nahuas organized to recuperate the lands that had been taken from them by landowners from Colima, who are linked to the Knights Templar Cartel. Due to their struggle, between the years of 2008 and 2014 alone, 32 community members were assassinated and another six forcefully disappeared.

Supreme Court to Rule on the Freedom of Indigenous Mazatec Community Organizer Miguel Peralta

Por

Nolan Peltz

18 June, 2024

On Wednesday, June 19, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation will rule on the amparo in the case of Miguel Peralta, community organizer and ex-political prisoner from the community of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, Oaxaca. The Supreme Court will decide whether or not to put a definite end to the nearly ten years of political imprisonment and persecution faced by Miguel Peralta.

Miguel is one of 35 members of the community assembly of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón criminalized in case number 02/2015, following a socio-political conflict in December 2014. The conflict was a consequence of mounting tension between the community assembly and the interests of a cacique group, backed by political party power, who’ve sought to maintain control of the municipal government, municipal funds, and the exploitation of natural resources in the community.

On December 14, 2014, the assembly was violently attacked by the cacique group led by Manuel Zepeda Cortés as they gathered in the town plaza to elect a community authority. The ensuing violence left two dead, including the son of Manuel Zepeda. Zepeda’s daughter, Elisa Zepeda Lagunas, would lead the criminalization efforts, fabricating crimes and using positions of political power in the municipal and then state government to influence the legal processes.

Miguel Peralta was arrested in April 2015 on charges related to the events on December 14. Over two years later, on October 26, 2018, he was sentenced to fifty years in prison for homicide and attempted homicide. Following an appeal from his legal team, his fifty-year sentence was absolved and his case returned to the final hearing, for the fact that he was denied his right to be at his first final hearing. Prison authorities had used the excuse that they didn't have gas money to transport him from prison in Cuicatlán to the court in Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca. In October 2019, he was acquitted of the charges and released after spending almost 4.5 years in prison.

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Following an appeal from the accusing party, on March 4, 2022, the fifty-year sentence was reaffirmed and a warrant put out for his arrest after less than two years of freedom. Following an appeal to that decision, the collegiate court in Oaxaca returned his legal process back eight years, to the testimony stage, seeking again for Miguel to face this process from inside prison. In the face of this decision, his legal team filed a request to the Supreme Court of the Nation for a review. Miguel Peralta is currently free, but with a warrant out for his arrest.

Photo: Anti-prison activity in Oaxaca in January 2023

All Eyes on the Supreme Court

In January 2024, the Supreme Court of the Nation took up the amparo with case number 6535/2023. And on June 19, they will discuss and release their decision. The lead opinion has been presented by Justice Loretta Ortiz Ahlf. The other justices—Juan Luis González Alcántara Carrancá, Jorge Mario Pardo Rebolledo, Ana Margarita Ríos Farjat, and Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena—will debate that opinion on June 19. The final decision must be made by a majority of the five justices.

“The court has a historic opportunity” explained Miguel Peralta’s lawyer, Araceli Olivos, in a press conference in Mexico City. The court has the opportunity to set a different precedent in the relation between Indigenous peoples and the Mexican state; a relation that has historically been stained by oppression, exploitation, discrimination, and marginalization against Indigenous peoples. With this decision, the court has the opportunity to begin undoing these historical wrongs perpetrated against Indigenous peoples.

Photo: Resistance art made of plasticine and other materials created by Valentin Peralta and David Peralta.

For Miguel’s legal team, there are two legal protocols they are encouraging the court to consider when analyzing the amparo in Miguel’s case. Firstly, the protocol for an intercultural perspective in cases related to Indigenous communities. What does this mean? That Miguel’s case must be contextualized in the political, social, and cultural context of the Mazatec people of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón.

“Inculturality invites us to dialogue, to see the other, to see this other community,” says Olivos, Miguel’s lawyer. “What we want to say to the court is that they look at the Mazatec people, that they look at Eloxochitlán, that they listen to the people of Eloxochitlán.” This isn’t a simple case of perpetrator and victim, but a complicated conflict which involves an entire community, and is directly related to a strained historical relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Mexican nation-state.

The second legal protocol Miguel’s lawyers are encouraging the Supreme Court to consider is that of minimum intervention. Rather than responding with criminalization, the state has the opportunity to “attend to the causes, promote dialogue, promote alternative mechanisms…the answer isn’t always prison, fines, legal processes, etc,” explains Olivos. This protocol can be applied in various circumstances, and has been applied previously by the court in cases related to community conflicts and Indigenous peoples.

Miguel’s lawyers argue that the previous resolution from the court in Oaxaca was insufficient in that it didn’t consider these different factors. It didn’t contextualize Miguel’s case within a much larger and much more complicated political, social, and cultural context in Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón.

Political and Cultural Context

The need for an intercultural perspective and minimum intervention is evident in Miguel Peralta’s case. The Mazatec people of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón are one of 68 ethnic groups that inhabit the territory now dominated by the Mexican state. They have their own language, spirituality, cosmovision, their own forms of internal organization and decision-making. Their self-determination is protected in the Mexican constitution as well as various international agreements signed by the Mexican government in relation to Indigenous peoples.

Miguel’s case is directly related to this fraught relationship between the Mexican nation-state and Indigenous peoples. His criminalization, and that of his compañeros, is a consequence of attempts to impose political party and cacique interests against the internal forms of community organization of the community, including the community assembly, collective work, and territorial defense. Relatedly, Miguel’s case is a question of Indigenous self-determination and autonomy, and the capacity for a community to resolve conflicts through their own internal processes.

The negative effects on the community of Eloxochitlán as a consequence of the conflict and the criminalization have been extensive. “My community has lost all of its customs following what happened in December of 2014,” explains Miguel’s mother, Martha Betanzos, in a press conference. “Since 2014 our community has declined, our schools are empty, our teachers have abandoned their classes because of everything that has happened in Eloxochitlán. All the medical services have decayed. There is no longer good healthcare.”

Slow Walk Toward Freedom

Even while their legal processes have been filled with irregularities and judicial delays, the politically imprisoned and persecuted of Eloxochitlán have slowly regained their freedom, little by little, over the past ten years.

On September 29, 2023, the court in District Court in Huautla de Jiménez changed the pretrial detention orders, releasing Jaime Betanzos and Herminio Monfil, two community members from Eloxochitlán who had been in prison since December 2014 without a conviction or a sentence. They were released not in complete freedom, but to continue their legal processes on the outside.

More recently, on June 12, 2024, the tribunal in Huautla de Jiménez ordered the release of Francisco Duran, Alfredo Bolaños, and Fernando Gavito, changing their pre-trial detention orders, allowing them to continue their legal cases outside of prison form inside their communities.

Photo: Miguel’s final hearing in the Mixed District Court of Huautla de Jiménez in 2019.

Miguel’s family and support crew hope that Miguel’s definite freedom follows these recent court victories, so that the community can continue to walk toward freedom, to continue to heal from the wounds of cacique and state repression.

“We want to live in peace, we want to be free,” says Marth Betanzos, Miguel’s mother. “We want to see Miguel Ángel Betanzos free. So that he can walk in his territory, so that he can listen to the birds, so that he can feel the mud on his feet, so that he can be amongst the mountains and coffee fields.”

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