Screenshot taken from the documentary on Samir made by Gloría Muñoz Ramírez and Gerardo Magallón published by Desinformémonos.
Those who ordered the murder of Samir Flores Soberanes, and those who executed him that early morning of February 20, 2019, knew very well what they were doing. Samir was a key person in the resistance against the Morelos Integral Project (PIM), that megaproject of the neoliberal era which was taken up again by the government of López Obrador and which consists of an aqueduct, a gas pipeline and two thermoelectric plants and which includes the states of Puebla, Tlaxcala and Morelos. From the Peoples’ Front in Defense of Land and Water Morelos-Puebla-Tlaxcala (FPDTA-MPT), Samir and his comrades had managed to resist several state and federal governments with scientific arguments demonstrating the unfeasibility of the PIM, among them, the risks involved in a gas pipeline in a volcanic area, noise pollution and water scarcity.
Those who murdered Samir also knew that he participated in other education and communication projects that were launched in Amilcingo, Morelos, the territory where he was born, which he defended, and where he was killed for defending the territory. Samir was a community organizer who promoted articulation within his community, and between his community and other communities in Mexico and the world. He was loved and respected because he taught how to fight by example. He was a node that managed to articulate people, peoples and organizations from different parts of the world. Samir knew how to build autonomy in his town and promote it by example in the places where his voice reached. They killed Samir for not giving up, because after they imposed the construction of the gas pipeline in 2014 in Amilcingo, he was not defeated, on the contrary, the people of Amilcingo woke up again and built autonomy, an oasis of rebellion in the center of the republic, say his fellow organizers. Those who assassinated him knew this well, and perhaps that was part of their intentions: to disarticulate a long and complex organizational process. At the same time, they sent a message to those who organize and defend territories and life: their effort could lead to their death.
Those who murdered Samir knew that nine days before the crime, on February 11, 2019, he and his companions had gone to protest at a rally of the then head of the executive branch. On that occasion, AMLO discredited those who protested: “Listen, leftist radicals, for me you are nothing more than conservatives.” They also knew that, a day before his murder, on February 19, Samir had confronted the federal superdelegate Hugo Erick Flores, lawyer of the paramilitaries of the Acteal massacre and who today participates in an alliance of pro-Zionist right wingers who, besides justifying the genocide in Gaza, seek political influence in Mexico (https://acortar.link/a2FfPV). Those words and acts were surely included in the calculations of those who murdered Samir.
Those who killed Samir and ordered the murder knew that their crime would be protected by a wide and solid network of corruption that even today, six years after the murder, remains in unpunished. This network includes Cuauhtémoc Blanco, former governor of Morelos, and Uriel Carmona, former prosecutor of Morelos, both now accused of other crimes, as well as members of the government and the federal prosecutor’s office who are not doing enough to bring the truth to light, to bring justice to Samir.
But what those who killed and ordered Samir’s murder did not know is that his family, his comrades in struggle, and people around the world will not let him be forgotten. This February 2025, more than 60 collectives around the world organize to remember Samir and to demand justice. In some parts of the planet, busts of Samir Flores Soberanes are being placed, anti-monuments that, like so many others in Mexico, remind us of the crimes that remain unpunished, the war that does not stop, the justice that does not come.
Samir’s face and name will also reflect the demands of a part of society in the world that is warning about the threats to life posed by the current mode of production. The demand for justice for Samir is also the demand for justice for the death of the three members of the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Northern Zone of the Isthmus, executed a few days ago in Oaxaca.
Those who murdered Samir, those who ordered the murder and those who today protect the material and intellectual authors of that crime with a cloak of impunity, did not know that Samir had sown the seed of rebellion and organization in his town and in so many others where he was never present, but where his word, his example, his dignity reached. Today, Samir blossoms.
Original article by Raul Romero published in La Jornada on February 22nd, 2025.
Photo credit: Heriberto Paredes, screenshot in “Samir,” video produced by Gloria Muñoz Ramírez and Gerardo Magallón of Desinformémonos.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.