The protesters claimed that the council is made up of people linked to the armed group “Los Herrera.”
TUXTLA GUTIÉRREZ, Chiapas. Indigenous Tsotsiles and Tseltals from Pantelhó who asked for the dismissal of members of the municipal council, recognized by the local Congress, after the cancellation of the elections of June 2nd, affirmed that the new municipal officials “financed the murder of Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez,” which was carried out on October 20th in San Cristóbal de Las Casas.
In a press conference, the protesters assured that this council is made up of people linked to the armed group “Los Herrera.”
In a statement released during an event held on Wednesday and which according to the organizers was attended by more than four thousand inhabitants of Pantelhó, it was reported that the new municipal council received 18 million pesos that were deposited on October 4th, and it was with this money that “they financed the murder of Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez.”
“Those of us gathered here are asking for the dismissal of the municipal council because they are the ones who ordered the killing” of Father Marcelo, they insisted in a video.
The protesters affirmed that the members of the council “appointed by a commission of the previous deputies on September 30th, do not provide social attention to the communities and only entered to plunder the resources of the municipality in complicity with ‘Los Herrera’ who live in the municipal capital and others who are outside the municipality, but who continue to finance minority groups to continue the social instability in the municipality.”
“We ask Congress to reinstate the installation of the new municipal council; we trust it will admit we are right, being the majority of the inhabitants, with the purpose of guaranteeing governability and privileging social peace,” they pointed out in the statement.
They also demanded that the Electoral Court of the State of Chiapas resolve the issue of the Municipal Council of Pantelhó as soon as possible and annul the decree of Congress dated September 30th, 2024 issued by the Permanent Commission of the previous deputies, “since the constitutional validity does not prevail, because it was not appointed in a session.”
At the beginning of this month, the protesters demonstrated in Tuxtla Gutiérrez for several days to request that the municipal council not be recognized, but when they did not find a response to their demand, they returned to their villages in Pantelhó.
In the municipality of Pantelhó, located in the Highlands of Chiapas, the normal elections were not held on June 2nd nor the special elections on August 25th, due to the situation of violence that has prevailed there for three years. On September 30th, Congress appointed a Council that was rejected by the majority of the inhabitants.
In 2021, after 18 years of governing Pantelhó by the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), Mayor Raquel Trujillo Morales was disowned and a municipal council was appointed that was chaired by Pedro Cortés López, linked to the group “Autodefensas del Pueblo El Machete”.
But after the forced disappearance of 21 men, the Prosecutor’s Office arrested Cortés López, who remains detained in the El Amate prison, along with the first councilor, Diego Méndez Cruz.
In the case of the “Los Herrera” group, Dayli de los Santos Herrera is imprisoned, accused of being the intellectual author of the murder of the former prosecutor of Indigenous Justice, Gregorio Pérez Gómez, who, according to the State Attorney General’s Office, was murdered in the framework of the investigations he was carrying out on the activity of criminal groups in the municipality of Pantelhó.
Original article by Gabriela Coutiño at Proceso, October 31st, 2024.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.