San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas
Some 100 residents of the community of Tzanembolom, municipality of Chenalhó, took refuge in the local school because alleged members of the group known as Los Herrera attacked them with firearms.
“The situation is very tough. We are locked in the school. The women and children are sad and crying, because we no longer have food,” said one of those affected.
He added that the women and children left their homes on Wednesday night and the men left at 6:00 a.m. this Thursday morning because “the hired killers ambushed us; they knocked down the houses with sledgehammers and even dug inside to make their trenches, waiting for us to return.”
He said that more than 100 sicarios (organized crime operatives) who live in the place called Fracción Tzanembolom, next to the community of the same name, were the ones who started the attacks on Wednesday.
The villagers said that some 20 members of the Mexican Army arrived to protect them, but there are more than 100 gunmen and they are well armed. “We just had a taco; the soldiers invited us, since we don’t have anything to eat.”
He commented that during Wednesday’s armed attacks two minors were grazed by bullets.
He requested the urgent intervention of the government to “come and pick us up by helicopter because we can’t get through, as all the roads are blocked.”
The Herrera group had control for two decades in the municipality of Pantelhó, adjacent to Tzanembolom, until July 2021, when the self-defense groups of El Machete, which currently control the region, broke in.
Lately, Los Herrera have extended into communities of Chenalhó adjacent to Pantelhó, such as the Tzanembolom Fraction.
Original article by Elio Henríquez in La Jornada on July 12, 2024.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.