They call for an intervention of the President of the Republic
By Hermann Bellinghausen
The ejidal authorities of Tila, in the Northern Zone of Chiapas, categorically denied the discharge of accusations by Paz y Justicia and the Digna Ochoa Committee for Human Rights in relation to the violence unleashed in the ejido, previously the municipal seat.
The aforementioned committee accused members of the autonomous ejidos of being the perpetrators of two murders on Saturday, in addition to the three deaths the previous day, and alluded that the attacks don’t have any relationship to the territorial conflict in Tila, but rather the criminal groups in the region, whose leaders come from ther neighboring municipality of Yajalón.
In addition, it linked the ejidatarios to the group Paz y Justicia (from which it now seeks to disassociate) and the paramilitaries of Santa Martha in Chenalhó, that have spent weeks attacking the communities of Aldama, and that this weekend left at least three wounded.
However, the ejido authorities of Tila deny the versions spread on social networks which directly blame the ejido brothers for what happened this past September 11th, as the Digna Ochoa Committee maintains without foundation.
The inhabitants of Tila point out that since the 25th of August, a group of locals and settlers under the command of Arturo Sánches and his son Francisco Arturo Sánchez Martínez, both from the paramilitary group Paz y Justicia, as well as Mercedes del Carmen Bonifaz Gutiérrez, José Rodrigo, Adelaida Cruz de Santiz, the Martínez Parcero and Julio César Gómez are the actors in what happened, along with other individuals already identified.
Also they indicate the young people from the community of Carrizal were contracted to destroy the control and surveillance gates of the General Assembly of Ejido Members, and blocked access to the town.
Every night (recently) bursts of gunfire from high-powered weapons were heard, to intimidate the ejidatarios in their own lands, but they “never came out to respond, to avoid confrontations.”
The one that incited the violence, in that episode was Eleasin Bárcenas who began to shoot with a pistol and, in that act, killed one ejidatario and wounded others, while the young people that accompanied him also began to fire, and the ejidatarios retreated into the bush.
In light of these facts, the ejidal authorities maintains they will not engage in a dialogue with murders to whom the law should be applied. They recalled that civil society sent a letter to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in which they asked him to intervene.
They report that “they are circulating audios of the voice of Braulio Martínez Parcero that incite to violence, and they spread other messages in which they reveal that they are guarded by people from the municipality of Yajalón, which means they are probably from the armed group of organized crime that the subject known as Chorizo commands, that has a history of kidnapping, and who were employees of the municipal seat during the previous three-year term of the mayor of Tila, Limberg Gregorio Gutiérrez Gómez.
The aggrieved ejidatarios mourn the deaths of the people from both groups caused by the Eleasin Bárcenas and the armed youth that continued the aggression against the ejidatarios, and therefore demand that the federal government evict these paramilitary-style groups out of the ejido of Tila.
This article was originally published in Spanish by La Jornada on September 14, 2020. https://www.jornada.com.mx/2020/09/14/politica/017n1pol
This English interpretation has been re-published by Schools for Chiapas.