Statement on the Occasion of the 15th Anniversary of the Murder of Bety Cariño and Jyri Jaakkola

On April 27, 2010, a solidarity and mutual aid caravan to the besieged autonomous Triqui municipality of San Juan Copala left the city of Oaxaca. Along the way, it was ambushed by government-backed paramilitaries belonging to UBISORT (Union for the Social Well-Being of the Triqui Region). The paramilitaries killed Mixtec organizer Bety Cariño and Finnish solidarity activist Jyri Jaakkola and wounded several others. The following statement marks 15 years since the murders. It was translated by Scott Campbell.

To the media
To national and international public opinion
To social, solidarity, and human rights organizations
To the National Indigenous Congress and the Indigenous Governing Council
To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
To the Indigenous peoples of Mexico and the world

On the occasion of the 15^th anniversary of the murder of Bety Cariño and Jyri Jaakkola:

Today marks 15 years of impunity. Fifteen years since the murder of Bety and Jyri. And, faithful to custom – and the necessary stubbornness of keeping memory alive – we return to this date with the same wounded but unshakeable dignity.

In this digital era, our compañeros have been converted into a QR code, a WhatsApp message, an app, a song, a video that travels the world, a worn photo, a graphic exhibition. But they are not only that: they are a voice that resists in time, in the memory of those of us who refuse to forget.

In these 15 years, we have traveled the entire alphabet – from A to Z – going to every corner where it was possible for us to be, asking for justice. Sometimes we found a warm space, a friendly face that knew how to listen to what should be Justice; but most of the time we only found the eternal bureaucracy, the lie, the indifference. The sidewalks were our place of dialogue, our classrooms, our public plazas: in hunger strikes, in marches, in blockades, in endless waits before public officials and “authorities” of any level. We never expected anything from them. And time has only confirmed that institutional justice in Mexico is a failure.

It has taken 5,475 days, almost nothing, to say – with firm words and open wounds – that the justice system, in which millions of Mexicans still place their hope, is designed to perpetuate the cycle of eternal impunity. What will they tell us in another 5,475 days? Perhaps, if anything, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will issue a ruling.

Today we know that if we had not lived through this injustice, perhaps we would continue believing that change is possible, in listening, in reparation. But no: that justice has not come and will not come from those in power. Governments come and go, but the practices remain the same: censorship, gagging, criminalizing the word of those who fight and demand justice.

And in the meantime, the war against Indigenous peoples does not stop: it intensifies and deepens. We denounce the constant attacks against autonomous territories, against those who defend life in the face of megaprojects of death. Today, in particular, we demand an immediate halt to the war against the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, against the community of Ostula in Michoacán, and against all the Indigenous resistances in the Isthmus and all of Mexico.

Rage burns upon seeing how those who raise their voices are murdered or disappeared: Marco Antonio Suastegui, María del Carmen Morales and her son Jaime Daniel Ramírez, Alin Isaday Salas Isidro, Samir Flores Soberanes, Sergio Rivera Hernández… and so, so many more names.

What can a country that sows violence, blood, and impunity reap?

At 15 years, with memory alive, with dignity intact, and with rebelliousness that does not surrender, we continue demanding:

Justice for Bety and Jyri!

End the war against Indigenous peoples!

End the war against Zapatista communities and against Ostula!

Justice for all social fighters!

Justice for all the murdered!

Return the disappeared alive!

Freedom for political prisoners!

Neither forgetting nor forgiveness!