“The defense of the earth is fundamental, it has to unite us all if we want to save humanity.” Your message of Peace resounds to the center of the Earth, Father Marcelo Pérez.
Rabid bells resound on a drizzling afternoon in San Cristóbal de las Casas. They accompany Father Marcelo Perez Perez in his farewell. They break the cold when they embrace the demand for justice of thousands of people walking in a procession-protest. He was murdered after officiating mass in the neighborhood of Cuxtitali, the morning of Sunday, October 20. Thousands walk to San Andres Sakamchen de los Pobres, his homeland.
A white flag flies with the word “PEACE.” Accompanying the chorus of Jobel inhabitants, members of the Pueblo Creyente (Believing People), people who came down from the highlands of Chiapas, hundreds of parishioners who overflowed, victims of forced displacement that Father Marcelo helped, ecclesial base communities, members of all the indigenous peoples of Chiapas.
“I give my life to defend life,” Father Marcelo told me in an interview in the parish office of the Church of Guadalupe, where he was parish priest and officiated masses periodically. He told me about the example of Monsignor Oscar Romero during the guerrilla war in El Salvador.
“Not even in the nineties, during the rampant paramilitary war, did the diocese lose one of its own. It happened now, when a Tsotsil priest led the homilies in the poorest neighborhoods of the Royal City,” describes researcher Ana Valadez. Now the war has changed its shape with illegal groups that they call organized crime.
“Chiapas is becoming a cemetery and we have to stand up for the simple, poor people. And continue raising awareness to defend life,” described Father Marcelo in the interview.
The throngs that flooded the Catholic ceremonies for three days are a testament to the genuine work of jtatik Marcelo Perez in the struggle for peace, justice, land, water, freedom, the rights of the people, of the victims. They recognize in him a person of moral weight, to whom they could turn to in Chiapas, on the brink of civil war. He was a fighter for human rights, an articulator and promoter of movements for Mother Earth, a channel of help for victims of violence, drug addiction or displacement.
“The work of Father Marcelo Perez Perez was very important in the struggles of the people for the defense of the land and the territory. Because through his prophetic voice, he made people see and reflect that the land is ours and that we have to defend it from the exploiters’ hands. Because that is the future and the life of our children and it is very important to take care of it because it is our life, we belong to the land,” says teacher Pascuala Vázquez, spokeswoman of the Chilón Community Government Council.
Pascuala met the father in the organization of the Movement in Defense of Life and Territory (Modevite). “He made us see that we are in the midst of an injustice. That it is very important to raise our voices for our people. I met Father Marcelo when I took office as a councilor in my municipality of Chilón. He was a very important person and I met him when he came to our inauguration.
“He put his hands on my head to bless me in my post.
In the movement in defense of life and territory he was one of the champions, a mentor, announcing that another path is possible to live in harmony with Mother Earth and also as brothers and sisters.”
Jtatik Marcelo accompanied the formation of Modevite in 2013, when he was parish priest of Simojovel and raised awareness about the damage of amber mining.
“In the Catholic Church the option for Mother Earth, for the territory has been very clear (…) The most important thing for me is the unity of people. So the Diocese of San Cristobal, in 2014 we held a Congress for Mother Earth and it has already become a transversal line that we call the Pastoral of the Earth”, said Marcelo in the interview we did in August 2024. We spoke with joy about the publication of Laudato Sí by Pope Francis. “That supports our work.”
He organized the Diocesan Pastoral Congress of Mother Earth in January 2014 together with several religious, a process through which they founded the Ministry of the Earth in the Diocese of San Cristobal, as a process that stems from the struggle for land in Chiapas, which they have been promoting since the 70s. They took up the defense of common property, against the caciques and now, against the organized crime that is advancing and causing forced displacement in different regions of Chiapas. “Accompany those who suffer,” said the father.
In 2014, Modevite together with Father Marcelo made a pilgrimage that traveled through 12 municipalities of Chiapas until reaching Tuxtla, the capital. Since then they have been denouncing the increase in drug sales and criminal groups.
More recently, jtatik Marcelo Perez traveled throughout the state to encourage the defense of the land. The priest witnessed the increase of violence, went to local churches to encourage religious participants to do something against the generalized violence, against dispossession, mining, extractivist activity, drug addiction. He was an organizer of the people by means of the Catholic faith.
Chiapas loses Father Marcelo when not even a month has passed since the entrance of CSP, the woman president of a new government self-proclaimed “second floor of the fourth transformation.” Only four days after the EZLN denounced aggressions and threats against their support bases to dispossess them of territory recovered in 1994. They point out that there is an agreement between organized crime and the governments to legalize the dispossession. This is the result of the six-year period of omissions that the government of former President AMLO meant in the escalation of violence.
The Tsotsil team of the Diocese of San Cristobal de las Casas wrote a letter to J’tatik Marcelo in the context of the threats and arrest warrant he received in 2021. “Your testimony strengthens us and encourages us to continue walking, accompanying our people. We value your thirst for justice, the search for peace and reconciliation.”
They quote a verse from the book of the prophet Isaiah 52, 7 at the beginning of their letter: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace.” Father Marcellus was a messenger of Peace.
A priest with an enormous heart who saw, preached, watched over, conciliated for peace in the struggles for land, for water, in caring for the territories for the free development of the indigenous peoples, to stop violence and displacements.“All the words of Jesus are very revolutionary, that’s why they killed him,” he said in an interview for Voces en Lucha. “The defense of the earth is fundamental, it has to unite us all if we want to save humanity.” Your message of Peace resounds to the center of the Earth, Father Marcelo.
Original text an photos by Daliri Oropeza published in Pie de Página.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.