In the back seat of a luxury van, an African lion looks out the right window at the streets of San Juan Chamula. The driver of the vehicle listens to El Comando Suicida del Mayo, and shows the list of narcocorridos waiting to be played. The scene, which seems to be taken from a TV drama, is real. It is part of the emerging culture in this Tsotsil municipality, along with indigenous homemade pornography and the songs of Los Cárteles de San Juan…
Organized crime groups that traffic drugs from Central America to Mexico and the United States use at least six routes that cross Chiapas by sea and land, indicate documents of the Secretary of National Defense [Sedena] that were consulted by El Sol de México after the Guacamaya leak. Regardless of the fact that three Military Zones operate in the state, drug traffickers have made their way through the state mainly by sea and land, since according to the document reviewed by this newspaper the security body has not identified air routes in Mexico.
Following the report last month from the Commission for Access to Truth and Justice in the Ayotzinapa case, the arrest of former Attorney General Murillo Karam, and the arrest warrants issued for dozens of military personnel, the parents of the 43 disappeared students are witnessing backtracking from positions of power, in particular the protection of the military. The victims’ families demand to know why.
By: R. Aída Hernández Castillo* Last June 14, heavily armed indigenous youth took over the popular market of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, and maintained control of the northern zone of the city for more than three hours, stealing, burning vehicles and terrorizing the population, without the various security forces doing anything to stop them. The press and the social networks explain these actions as the confrontation between several criminal groups over control of the market, mentioning the Motonetos, the Vans and the San Juan Chamula cartel as some of the groups confronted in these fights over territorial control. …
Chiapas is on the brink of war and hopefully, as Mercedes Sosa sang, we will not be indifferent.
