Communique from San Sebastian Bachajon

From Dorset Chiapas Solidarity

Compañeros and compañeras, we want to inform you of the situation we are living through in our territory, as this is a clear example of how we have been affected by similar situations in the past.

On the night of Sunday 12th June, on the section of the highway in the municipality of Tumbalá, in the northern zone of Chiapas, a group of around 10 people assaulted and killed a young campesino, 22 years of age, named Medardo Astudillo Arcos, from the community of Cuctiepa.

The Ch’ol and Tseltal communities of the region, knowing that there will be no justice from the state due to the complicity of the police forces with the bad government and organised crime, decided to organize ourselves autonomously and mobilised around 800 men to track and capture the criminal gang, who, thanks to witnesses who were in the area, were identified as Miguel Pérez Cruz, Antonio Pérez Cruz, and Medardo Pérez Cruz, among others, and there were confessions that the group organizer was Mariano Silvano Gómez.

The operation was carried out by fifteen communities from different municipalities, among them the municipality of Bachajón, adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandόn Jungle; we saw it necessary to unite against organised crime, to prevent the bad government from utilizing these types of situations, with the help of the mass media, and presenting them to civil society as the result of a prevailing insecurity and division among indigenous peoples, advocating police and military intervention in territories that are the focus of government interests.

Furthermore, we denounce that because of these interests, the bad government, in complicity with police forces in the region, has utilized similar conflicts to incriminate members of the indigenous organization of Bachajón, unjustly detaining them, as is the case of Emilio Jiménez Gómez and Esteban Gómez Jiménez.

The organized intervention of the Ch’ol and Tseltal communities to detain the criminals, using our customs and traditional practices and the ways and modes of community policing, is an example of autonomous justice which not only meets the security needs of the region, but also those of tourism, which daily travels these roads heading to destinations like Agua Azul, Palenque or the Yucatan peninsula.

Compañeros and Compañeras we will keep you informed about the situation.

Never again a Mexico without us

Land and freedom

Long live Zapata!

¡Hasta la victoria siempre!

Freedom for political prisoners!

Juan Vázquez Guzmán Lives, the Bachajón struggle continues!

Juan Carlos Gómez Silvano Lives, the Bachajón struggle continues!

No to the dispossession of indigenous territory!

State police out of indigenous territory!

Immediate return of the disappeared and murdered compañeros from the Normal School Raúl Isidro Burgos of Ayotzinapa!

Long live the dignified struggle of the Chol compañeros and compañeras from the ejido Tila!

Long live the dignified struggle of the compañeros and compañeras from San Francisco Xochicuautla!

Long live the communities who struggle for their autonomy and freedom!

JUSTICE FOR AYOTZINAPA, ACTEAL, ABC, ATENCO!

EJIDO SAN SEBASTIAN BACHAJON, ADHERENTS TO THE SIXTH DECLARATION OF THE LACANDON JUNGLE