To the National Indigenous Congress
To the Believing People of the Diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas
To the women and men building Peace and Life
To Human Rights Defenders
To the Free and Alternative Media
To the National and International Media
To National and International Civil Society
Sisters and Brothers:
Five years after the cowardly assassination of our compañero and brother Simón Pedro Pérez López, violence in this region, as in other parts of Chiapas, is as alarming as it was in the days before July 5, 2021, when a hitman murdered our brother in the Simojovel market.
It is sad and infuriating that the commemoration of the assassination of our compañero and brother Simón Pedro is taking place amid an atmosphere of terror in the communities surrounding Acteal; the mourning ceremony for our compañero and brother Simón Pedro is being held in the context of mockery, harassment, and repression against the searching mothers of Chiapas and Mexico, as happened during the inauguration of the FIFA World Cup in Mexico City.
As in the days of the PRI and PAN governments, this Morena government — instead of seriously and decently addressing the country’s important and urgent problems, instead of listening to the people and taking their demands into account, instead of seeking policies and mechanisms for peaceful solutions — offers “bread and circus” through the World Cup, a lucrative business for the capitalist monster called FIFA.
And while people are under the anesthesia of the “bread and circus,” the bad government of Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo criminalizes and represses teachers of the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers (CNTE), who — instead of being heard and instead of the government fulfilling its promise to repeal the so-called “ISSSTE Law,” as promised during her campaign — are now met only with lies and mockery from the very government that used pretty words to ask for their votes to gain power. That is called BETRAYAL.
The infamy that the current bad governments commit so cynically knows no bounds. For example, the governor of Chiapas calls his government “humanism that transforms.” And this “humanist government,” through the so-called “People’s Public Security Secretariat (SSP),” met this past May 26 with Hila Burg, Israel’s consul in Mexico, supposedly to “strengthen strategic alliances and binational cooperation on security matters.” As denounced by the organization Otros Mundos Chiapas, we too say this is an outrageous mockery — and this meeting with a representative of a genocidal country confirms that the police force known as the “Pakal Immediate Reaction Forces (FRIP)” are being trained and armed NOT TO PROTECT THE PEOPLE, but rather are being trained and advised by a foreign government that kills children in Palestine and other countries. This “elite” police force, better known as “Los Pakales,” has, since its appearance here in Chiapas, intensified criminalization, repression, and torture, terrorizing many communities. Its members have been implicated in a narco-payroll scandal that came to light a few months ago, after National Guard and Mexican Army forces killed the country’s most wanted drug lord.
When we see everything that is happening in Chiapas and in Mexico, and we realize that it is the same police that steals, tortures, and kills whenever that is the order they receive from above, then, as a true and organized people, we ask: who in their right mind can believe in this kind of police that calls itself “security of the people”?
We, the women and men of Las Abejas de Acteal, do not believe in pretense, we do not believe in false speeches, because WE HAVE MEMORY. Because in 1997, when the paramilitaries of Chenalhó — the material authors of the Acteal Massacre — were trained and armed by the Mexican Army on the orders of their supreme commander, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León. Because in the days before the assassination of our compañero and brother Simón Pedro, and before the escalation of violence in the municipality of Pantelhó, we denounced it and demanded that the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador intervene and protect the population as a whole. And likewise, before Father Marcelo was cowardly murdered just 19 days after Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo took office, we also spoke out, alongside dozens of national and international human rights organizations — and the response of these governments, from Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León to Andrés Manuel López Obrador to Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, their “humanist” and “Fourth Transformation” response, was always: “everything is fine,” “we have other data.”
We could go on with a long list of the infamies committed by these bad governments hand in hand with organized crime against organized Indigenous peoples.
And here we are now, commemorating five years since the crime committed against Simón Pedro. True justice has still not been served for the arbitrary taking of his life, because by imprisoning only the hitman, justice was only half done — those who gave the order remain free, committing more murders against human rights defenders, against those fighting extractivism and the dispossession of lands and territories. That is why we remain organized and steadfast in our struggle in defense of life and in resistance, just as our compañero and brother Simón Pedro lived and fought with conviction.
Five years into the Memory of Simón Pedro, despite the darkness and death in which organized crime, in complicity with the bad governments of Chiapas and Mexico, keeps us submerged, The Light of Memory and the Steadiness of our Hope is Not Extinguished. To those who are still not organized, who still feel indifferent to our struggle and to the deaths that come from those in power above, we respectfully invite you once again to wake up and raise your voice — because the day there are no more people left to fight, it will already be too late. Let us not leave for tomorrow what is urgent to do today.
And finally, we want to thank you, in the name of Simón Pedro, in the name of Simón Pedro’s family, and in the name of the Las Abejas de Acteal Organization, for accompanying us on this day, whether in person or from your own countries, spaces, and communities of struggle. Do not let them keep killing us. Let us not allow more impunity and mockery. Let us all come together to work for peace and for life.
Five years since the cowardly assassination of our compañero and brother simón pedro, in the name of god the father-mother and in the name of the heart of heaven and the heart of mother earth,
We demand: a total end to the violence in Chiapas!
Truth and justice for Simón Pedro, for father Marcelo, for the 45 sisters and brothers, plus the 4 unborn babies massacred in Acteal.
From Acteal, House of Memory and Hope.
Sincerely,
The Voice of the Las Abejas de Acteal Civil Society Organization.
For the Executive Board:
Francisco López Santis — President
Juan Pérez López — Secretary
Carlos Flores Gómez — Treasurer
Original text published by Sociedad Civil de Las Abejas de Acteal on July 5th, 2026.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.