Mexico City/Desinformémonos. The autonomous community of San Lorenzo de Azqueltán, in Villa Guerrero, Jalisco, denounced the murder of Marcos Aguilar Rojas, an agrarian representative, which occurred on November 26th, 2025, on the communal land of El Caracol. The community holds regional caciques, police, and judicial officials responsible for a crime planned to seize their ancestral territory. Following the attack, community members reclaimed the El Caracol land through community mobilization.
The murder of Marcos Aguilar Rojas is part of a historical pattern of violence and harassment in the region. The community denounced that the caciques and their gunmen planned the attack with the complicity of municipal, state, and judicial officials. These authorities have protected and covered up previous attacks. The community asserts that this crime is not a conflict between neighbors but an attempt at territorial dispossession and the extermination of the Indigenous organization.
Those affected documented that prosecutors, judges, and authorities have blocked key investigations, prevented the collection of evidence, and protected the perpetrators. According to the statement, the District Administrator of the Colotlán Court halted the collection of ballistic samples from one of the gunmen. This guarantees impunity and demonstrates institutional collusion in the attacks against the community.
The community demands a presidential decree from the federal government recognizing, delimiting, and granting title to the ancestral territory of San Lorenzo de Azqueltán. Furthermore, it calls on civil society, human rights organizations, and the media to support the defense of territory, monitor impunity, and denounce violence. The community affirms that it will not abandon its lands nor renounce its identity and warns that the responsibility for future attacks will fall on the authorities who ignore the situation.
The full statement follows:
URGENT STATEMENT FROM THE AUTONOMOUS INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY OF SAN LORENZO DE AZQUELTÁN, REGARDING THE COMPLICITY, STRUCTURAL IMPUNITY, AND OBJECTIVES BEHIND THE MURDER OF MARCOS AGUILAR ROJAS
MARCOS LIVES ON, THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES!
The community reclaims the disputed land, El Caracol.
Marcos was murdered on the orders of regional caciques to seize our territory.
URGENT STATEMENT FROM THE AUTONOMOUS INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY OF SAN LORENZO DE AZQUELTÁN, REGARDING THE COMPLICITY, STRUCTURAL IMPUNITY, AND OBJECTIVES BEHIND THE MURDER OF MARCOS AGUILAR ROJAS
To the peoples and governments of the world
To the free and honest media
To organizations in solidarity with Indigenous peoples
Our autonomous Indigenous community of San Lorenzo de Azqueltán, municipality of Villa Guerrero, Jalisco, has already publicly denounced the murder of our brother and agrarian representative, Marcos Aguilar Rojas, as well as the serious injury of our fellow community member Gabriel Aguilar Rojas, which occurred on November 26th, 2025, on the communal land of El Caracol.
We address the peoples and governments of the world with profound sorrow at the death of one of the most honest and committed individuals to the defense of our territory that our community has ever produced. We denounce, by name and with concrete actions, the complicity, vested interests, and power structure that allowed—and continues to allow—this crime to occur. Therefore, we humbly, with dignity, and with respect, declare that:
1. This is a political and territorial crime, not an isolated incident.
The murder of Marcos Aguilar Rojas was the logical consequence of decades of armed aggression, land grabs, death threats, and harassment of the traditional and communal authorities of Azqueltán.
The attack of November 26th was not improvised: it was planned, agreed upon, and carried out by local caciques and their groups of gunmen, protected by the omission, silence, or direct participation of municipal and state authorities, judicial officials, and law enforcement agents.
To deny it—as the Jalisco state prosecutor attempted to do, reducing everything to “neighborhood disputes”—is to participate in the crime, which echoes the discourse of those in power regarding the paramilitary attacks suffered by the indigenous peoples of our country, such as in the territory of the Zapatista brothers and sisters and in other regions, to carry out dispossession and, through terror, to destroy indigenous organizations.
According to the community’s own investigation and the evidence exposing the powerful figures in the region, we denounce that on Tuesday, November 25th, 2025, at Juan Aguilar’s residence, the group of gunmen we have denounced met with the cacique Refugio Raygoza to plan the dispossession of the communal lands of El Sabino Quemado and El Caracol. At that same meeting, they agreed to the execution of our compañero Marcos, for which the complicity of Favio Flores Sánchez “La Polla” and government and police officials who participated in previous acts of harassment against community members was essential. These meetings continue to take place in the town of Izolta, where attacks against our community members are still being planned.
2. There is a network of complicity involving prosecutors, police officers, local caciques, and judicial officials.
The investigation files accumulated over years show the same pattern and the same group of aggressors, who have acted with firearms and extreme violence in at least seven years of documented attacks.
During the compilation of case file 468/2025 5-J, originating from the recent events, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Judiciary once again acted to cover up for the aggressors Esteban and Manuel Aguilar Herrera, who have attacked our community members. The most recent act of cover-up was carried out by Jorge Alonso Arellano Gándara, District Administrator of the Court of Control, Trial, Comprehensive Justice for Adolescents, and Criminal Execution of the Eleventh Judicial District in the State of Jalisco, based in Colotlán, Jalisco. Following the events of November 26th of this year, the Public Prosecutor requested that gunshot residue samples be taken from the detainee Manuel Aguilar Herrera, but the public defender prevented it under the pretext that he was “unconscious.” When the request was formally presented to the Court, it was said District Administrator who—illegally, without legal authority, and acting as The aggressor’s protector—rejected the request with false arguments, delaying the investigation and preventing the sample from being taken, violating the right to justice and making it impossible to appeal the decision, in addition to compromising the effectiveness of the expert analysis and depriving the victims of fundamental evidence that depended on the legal and prompt action of the authorities.
This action was taken to directly favor the gunman Manuel Aguilar Herrera and, once again, guarantee his impunity. This is one of the many known and documented incidents: such as beating elderly people to dispossess them of their land, raiding homes to threaten, intimidating a girl by threatening to involve organized crime if she did not abandon her land and participate in the armed dispossession of the territory, in addition to being part of the same network of impunity that has also protected Favio Flores Sánchez “La Polla”, whose armed attack against autonomous authorities was downgraded by the same criminal court of Colotlán to simple “injuries” with a ridiculous reparation, twisting the law to guarantee the impunity of those who seek to exterminate us and take away our territory.
The recent cover-up—proven by the illegal actions of the District Administrator who blocked the collection of evidence from the murderer—demonstrates that the Jalisco State Prosecutor’s Office and part of the Judiciary have been active cogs in the machinery of impunity.
Everything is documented.
Everything is in the investigation files.
Everything is in the testimonies.
3. The real objective is to seize our territory, not a “neighborly dispute.”
What they want is not only to eliminate agrarian authorities, but also our territory and Indigenous organization. The local caciques and supposed small landowners, with their affluent economies in the region, have invaded thousands of hectares of communal land, and now, with this crime, they have made it clear that they seek to exterminate the community in order to appropriate what has belonged to us for centuries. We pointed this out on November 13th, 2025, when we publicly denounced the harassment of our community members by alleged investigative police officers from the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Villa Guerrero, Jalisco, who stated:
that they “don’t give a damn about the agrarian lawsuit,”
that if we run, “they’ll break us,”
that they are going to enter with police and weapons.
The murder of Marcos is just one more step in that plan.
4. The historical responsibility is of the Mexican State
The Mexican State is responsible through action, omission, and historical negligence.
It is responsible because:
It has failed to guarantee the community’s safety despite repeated formal complaints.
It allowed judicial officials to obstruct the investigation.
For decades, it has denied full legal recognition of the Tepecano territory, opening the door to invaders, local strongmen, and armed violence.
The negligence of the municipal, state, and federal governments has cost lives, and if they fail to act, it will continue to do so.
5. Given the gravity of the situation and the danger we face, we demand that the Federal Government:
Immediately issue a Presidential Decree recognizing, delimiting, and granting title to the ancestral territory of the Indigenous Community of San Lorenzo de Azqueltán, municipality of Villa Guerrero, Jalisco.
Without this full legal recognition, the community will remain vulnerable to armed attacks, criminalization, land invasions, institutional neglect, and further deaths.
The Federal Government must understand that its responsibility is direct.
It cannot continue to ignore that the life of an Indigenous community depends on decisions that only the Executive Branch can make.
If the government wants to stop the bloodshed, it must begin by recognizing the territory of those who have inhabited and defended these lands since time immemorial.
6. Let there be no doubt
We, as an autonomous Indigenous community, even if they kill us, will not abandon our territory, we will not renounce our Tepehuan and Wixárika identity, and we will not yield to the murderers or the local cacique.
We announce to the peoples and governments of Mexico and beyond that today, following the treacherous armed attack, the community, through mobilization, recovered the El Caracol property, coveted by people outside the community, and the site where our comrade Marcos Aguilar Rojas was murdered.
We are prepared to continue defending life and territory, so, for the first time, listen carefully, those who govern:
Every drop of blood spilled due to incompetence, negligence, or complicity will fall on your shoulders.
The Mexican State has the power to stop this war or to deepen it, and it will be your decision which side of history you choose to be on. We will not forget that, not even if a thousand years pass.
7. We call upon the peoples and the consciences of humanity.
We call upon the peoples of the world to remain vigilant, and upon human rights organizations to monitor and stand with the community, echoing our demands.
We call upon honest media to break the wall of silence that protects those responsible.
We, as a people, have resisted for hundreds of years and will resist for hundreds more if necessary.
But let it be clear:
We will not surrender.
We will not sell out.
We will not give up.
Because Marcos Lives and the Struggle Continues.
From the bottom of the Bolaños Canyon
Autonomous Indigenous Community of San Lorenzo de Azqueltán, Municipality of Villa Guerrero, Jalisco
Original article at Desinformémonos, Decmeber 1st, 2025.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.