Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Center for Human Rights Report
The Chiapas government, which took office on December 8th, has completed three months of what the head of the Executive Branch, Eduardo Ramírez Aguilar, described as “100 days of peace.” In his assessment last weekend, he highlighted a reduction in violence in areas where organized crime groups have subjugated the population for more than three years through murders, disappearances, and forced recruitment to gain territorial control.
However, within the framework of the annual report of the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Center for Human Rights (Frayba), presented on Wednesday, the humanitarian organization detailed that “regarding the so-called peace we are in, it is important to emphasize that there will be no peace as long as armed groups linked to organized crime, linked to power groups that have been entrenched for decades in the state of Chiapas, are not dismantled, prosecuted, and disarmed,” said Carlos Ogaz, head of Frayba’s systematization area.
Pedro Faro, also a member of Frayba, stated that official peace discourses have been used by previous governments, and “today we are seeing that those who are joining the government are the leaders of organized crime; they are now government officials, and that is an extremely critical situation.”
The Chiapas government also created, starting December 8th, 2024, an elite police group called the Pakal Immediate Reaction Force (Pakales), made up of individuals with military training and mostly from the states of Zacatecas and Mexico City, according to Security Secretary Oscar Aparicio Avendaño.
In his account of the 100 days of his administration, he said that among the actions achieved are the arrests of 2,278 people, including 366 police officers, accused of common crimes, in addition to patrols in areas with high rates of violence.
In this regard, Carlos Ogaz stated that “this security strategy being promoted by the current state administration involves militarized police forces, which, based on experience in other states in the country, are also part of the administration of the criminal economy and carry out serious human rights violations.”
He explained that state security officials have been subject to judicial investigations “for being responsible for or involved in massacres in Mexico, others linked to the promotion of illegal armed groups in the Chiapas Highlands region, and still others for participating in acts of torture.”
Pedro Faro said that what the population is experiencing in the communities “is no longer fear of organized crime, but rather fear of the Pakales,” which inhibits acts of protest or denunciation.
“So, what peace are we talking about? There are those who call it a simulated peace, a narco-peace.” In his view, what is happening in Chiapas “are agreements between local groups and criminal groups. They are very fragile agreements.” Suddenly, we can be in the middle of 100, 200, 300 days, and it seems like we’re going to live in a homogeneous reality. However, I insist, these are very fragile, tenuous agreements that break down, and the violence fueled by the armed groups that remained in the communities, in the territories that weren’t dismantled, is reactivated,” Ogaz noted.
Pedro Faro emphasized that through the monitoring carried out by Frayba, “we have confirmed that organized crime groups have been arrested, but some are arrested and others are not. That’s why we say that new pacts with organized crime are being formed.”
“For us, peace isn’t a pause or a respite with fewer confrontations; it has to do with building justice processes,” emphasized Chloé Stevenson, also a member of Frayba.
The report presented by Frayba on Wednesday is titled “Chiapas, in the Spiral of Armed and Criminal Violence.” The pdf can be downloaded in Spanish.
Original article by Angeles Mariscal, Chiapas Parelelo, March 20th, 2025.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.