Paramilitaries Attack the Ejido Tila in Chiapas

The National Indigenous Congress and Indigenous Governing Council denounce the recent paramilitary attack in the Ejido Tila in Chiapas which killed one and injured others. The community has long faced violent repression in its struggle for territorial defense and autonomy.

To the People of Mexico

To the People of the World

To the National and International Sixth

To the Media

With pain and rage, we denounce the cowardly attack against the Ejido Tila, Chiapas, where the compañero, Pedro Alejandro Jiménez Pérez, was assassinated. On September 11, the paramilitary group, Peace and Justice, together with people close to the municipal government, attacked the people of Tila with high caliber weapons. After an agreement was made in the general assembly, the community was in route to liberate the road blockades that these groups had installed at the entrance to the ejido to close off our community. There, paramilitaries had previously destroyed a security checkpoint on August 25.

In addition to the assassination of the compañero Pedro Alejandro, in the same attack, Madardo Pérez Jiménez, Ángel Vázquez Ramírez and Jaime Lugo Pérez, were injured.

We denounce the paramilitary leader, Arturo Sánchez Sánchez, his son Francisco Arturo Sánchez Martínez, and the municipal president, Limber Gregorio Gutiérrez Gómez. They have dedicated themselves to destroying the autonomy of the Ejido Tila and to dispossessing it of its supposed legally recognized territory, deploying corruption and rot in the community, to open the door to narco-paramilitary control.

Through territorial dispossession, and with the support of the three levels of bad government, they want to end with the autonomy that has cost the Chol people of Tila so much—the autonomy which is and will be fully recognized by the National Indigenous Congress and the Indigenous Governing Council.

These attacks are part of the increased activity of armed groups, and the proliferation of paramilitaries, in and around the communities that make up the National Indigenous Congress in Chiapas and the bases of support of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. They are trying to encircle, terrorize, displace and dismantle the organized people.

The Morena-Verde-PRI party, which are all one, has dedicated itself to support violence, to planting division, to arming the enemies of the people, and to declaring with their cowardly attacks, the intensification of war. The war has as its objective to end with the collective life of the people, with the dignified resistance that protects our mother earth. As the CNI-CIG, we will act accordingly and in solidarity with the Ejido Tila.

We denounce the cynical complicity of the state and federal governments, who are responsible for the increasing violence, and we call on the people of Mexico and the world to raise their voice to stop the tragedy that is coming.

Sincerely.

September 2020

For the Integral Reconstitution of our Peoples

Never More a Mexico Without Us

National Indigenous Congress-Indigenous Governing Council