Since June 2021, Chiapas has been experiencing a spiral of violence associated with drug trafficking. The violence is not new. It dates back to colonization itself. Since the 16th century, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas documented the atrocities committed against the native peoples during the Conquest. The presence of organized crime in the state is also nothing new. For decades it has been operating in the region, which shares 658 kilometers of border with Guatemala, a country that is, in fact, a large warehouse of illicit goods: from drugs to undocumented migrants in transit to the United States.
The unprecedented aspect of this cycle is the magnitude, extent and depth of the violence related to cartel disputes over routes, production zones, drug consumption centers, youth recruitment, population displacement, the collection of bribes and counterinsurgency tasks.
Between December 1, 2018 and June 2024, the state prosecutor’s office recorded 6,147 homicides, 2,386 intentional and 3,761 negligent; 177 femicides; 78 kidnappings; 943 cases of sexual abuse; 18,550 robberies (to homes, businesses, public roads and transportation); 319 extortions; 5,795 drug trafficking incidents, and more than 40,000 displaced persons.
According to the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (SESNSP), between January 1 and September 30, 2024, there were 525 intentional homicides, 49 percent more than in the same period of 2023.
And yet, there is an underreporting of what is really happening. These figures are just the tip of the iceberg. They do not include the casualties from the fighting between criminal groups in the Sierra and the Borderlands, who are picked up and buried by their compañeros. Nor the tortured, or the thousands of people who have to pay the gangs a toll in order to work and live, or the battered women who do not report it out of fear. Even less, the de facto power that the capos have in vast regions, and that, in practice, turns them into “imparters” of justice, above the legally recognized authorities. They make the siege against communities in resistance invisible.
The recent assassination of Father Marcelo was a turning point in this escalation to dismantle those who promote peace. Simón Pérez, catechist of the parish of Santa Catarina in Pantelhó, former president of the civil association Las Abejas de Acteal, was executed by hired killers on July 5, 2023 (https://shorturl.at/ANvkA). Professor José Artemio López, organizer of the anti-narco marches in Chicomuselo, was tortured and executed in front of his own people on October 31, 2023 (https:// shorturl.at/UZBTI). Catechist Ignacio Perez Lopez and his family (six members), five other people, were savagely killed on May 15.
The old life no longer exists. Thousands of farmers can no longer grow crops or raise livestock. Merchants do not open their businesses or do so for only a short time. Transporters and cab drivers are at a standstill. In Chicomuselo, more than 12 communities (4,200 people) were abandoned by their inhabitants. At the beginning of the current 2024-25 school year and in the first months, narco-violence prevented at least 300,000 preschool, primary and secondary students in the Sierra, Frailesca and Centro regions from returning to school.
As a human rights defender explains: “Before, violence came from the State or from companies when there was economic interest. Now it comes from organized crime. They have taken control. They have displaced the population. There is a siege on daily life. They exercise terror to control the territory. It began in Frontera Comalapa in June 2021. It began with the assassination of the local crime boss who had control of the state. It spread to Chicomuselo and then to Motozintla, Mazapa de Madero, La Grandeza, Bellavista, Honduras de la Sierra. Now it is moving towards the Fraylesca: Montecristo de Guerrero, Angel Albino Corzo, La Concordia.”
On September 4, 2008, the Jesuit priest Ricardo Ronco Robles published in La Jornada, after the Creel massacre, in which a commando killed 13 people in Bocoyna, Chihuahua, during the government of Felipe Calderón, the article “La conquista del narco es la misma” (https://shorturl.at/wmrv1). There he provides substantive keys to understand what is happening in Chiapas. He says: “All of this entangles a skein of economy, politics, regional infrastructure, normative principles and values of the narco – a culture perhaps – that penetrates in varying degrees, gradually, at all social levels. It is in reality a “conquest” with its gold, its despotism, its slavery… with its war and all.
“A Rarámuri made me see it in a simple conversation. He asked what was new about the narco, when it is the same as it has always been for five centuries. It is another activity in which the indigenous people are pressured and forced to work, but it is the same thing. The mines, more or less were the same, there was always the violence and crimes and death all the same, just as there were rich and poor, and in everything they left us the worst part. The same invasion of our territories, the same plundering of our forests, the same tourism that even takes our water, and even the mining companies are coming back. Just as one day they brought marijuana and poppy crops. For us it’s the same thing, that’s how the invaders are, but maybe for you it’s something new.”
In Chiapas, moreover, this offensive is part of the counterinsurgency war against Zapatismo and the communities in resistance. It is not for no reason that many old paramilitaries or their sons and daughters have joined organized crime in this crusade. The new narco-colonization demands the annihilation of the will to fight for another life, which the rebels embody.
Original text by Luis Hernández Navarro published in La Jornada on November 5th, 2024.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.