Members of the Lacandon community are already part of organized crime groups, they said.
Indigenous leaders and their families have been displaced for a year, after organized crime members threatened them with death for denouncing the use of landing strips and land for drug trafficking.
Now, from exile, they reiterate that “violence has become commonplace in the Lacandon Jungle,” that several communities in the jungle are subjected to organized crime groups and, in their view, “the situation in our border state is a powder keg about to explode, our situation is only the tip of the iceberg.”
Some of the displaced are former communal authorities of the Lacanja Cansayab community, since organized crime groups intensified their presence in the Lacandon jungle, which they opposed.
This led to threats and attacks until, on September 13th, 2023, they were cornered inside the community, so humanitarian organizations intervened so that federal government authorities could remove them by helicopter.
Since then, they have been living in a situation of forced displacement, and they and their families are temporarily living in the Nueva Palestina community, also in the Lacandon, as they explained in a statement where they make a new call to the authorities to intervene.
As regards their displacement and the threats and attacks against them, they filed criminal complaints with the Chiapas Prosecutor’s Office; however, they claim that the Chiapas government ruled out considering them victims of forced displacement and only declared that they are people “in a vulnerable state.”
“The government’s only response and proposal is that we stay in our homes and territories, that we do not move, but that entails accepting to work for criminal groups, surviving being extorted, paying their taxes as a right of way and participating in their illegal activities, functioning as a social base for these criminal groups as their police and in their mobilizations,” they explained.
They denounced in the letter that they made public, that members of the Lacandon community are already part of organized crime groups, “Lacandon brothers have unfortunately allied themselves with criminals, endangering our rights as an ancestral indigenous people, placing our territories at the service of these organizations and controlling all families,” and those who oppose are threatened, and in some cases, disappeared, they said.
Regarding their situation, they explained that in an assembly that was held in Lacanja Cansayab just last May, “authorities together with members of organized crime informed the assembly that they were going to take possession of our plots, houses and properties; totally stripping us of all our community and private heritage.”
“We see that there is no possibility of returning to our community of Lacanja Chansayab because organized crime is operating 24 hours a day, they operate as police in the community, involving all its inhabitants who have stayed behind to participate with them, either through extortion or involuntarily (…) we have observed the participation of the state police in the maneuvers of organized crime and that is why we fear for our safety and we consider that there are no favorable conditions to guarantee our integrity.”
The Lacandon leaders pointed out that their situation of forced displacement and the threats against them have placed them and their families “in a situation of poverty and marginalization, in addition to the fact that we are at serious risk for our physical integrity without access to health or education.”
“But we do not resign ourselves to this situation and we want to recover our property and to be paid for the damages and losses caused by the displacement that we have suffered for some time.”
They pointed out that if the government at its three levels, federal, state, and municipal, is incapable of enforcing their rights and stopping the aggressors of the communities, they demand that they “assume their responsibility to compensate us financially for the value of those assets that have been illegally and illegitimately expropriated by organized crime.”
Original article by Ángeles Mariscal, Chiapas Paralelo, September 17th, 2024.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.
Photo by Ángeles Mariscal.