800 Policemen and 400 Paramilitaries Present in the Vicinity of the Zapatista Territory of the Ejido of Bachajón

Submitted and translated to It’s Going Down

The adherents of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle of the Ejido San Sebastián Bachajón announced that today, at approximately 9 am, they became aware of the presence of police in the access crossroads for the waterfalls of Agua Azul. According to a report of the adherents, they identified five autobuses, seven large trucks and eight police vans, as well as twenty-five paramilitary vans and a helicopter of the state police flying over Zapatista territory.

They reported that approximately 800 police and 400 paramilitaries were present at the tool booth presumably as part of an operation of dispossession of a group of ejido members lead by Daniel Moreno Gómez, Manuel Jiménez Moreno, Juan Álvaro Moreno, Carmen Aguilar, among others. The political and military presence, according to the ejido members, represents “a grand threat to the adherents of the Sixth and for the compañerxs of the bases of support of the EZLN in Indigenous and Zapatista territories.”

The ejido members identified the ejido commissioner Manuel Guzmán Álvaro as responsible for the action, whose group “blocked roads in different areas on the 17^th and 18^th of this month”, demanding among other things the execution of arrest orders and of the dispossession of the ejido members.

These actions are taking place two days after the ejido member and land defender Domingo Pérez Álvaro was brutally beaten when he returned from a visit with the political prisoner Santiago Moreno Pérez in the prison of Playas de Catazajá.