Three Members of the CIPOG-EZ Assassinated in Guerrero

Two communiques from the Popular Indigenous Council of Guerrero—Emiliano Zapata following the recent assassination of three of its members

November 6, 2022

To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation

To the National Indigenous Congress

To the Indigenous Governing Council

To the National and International Sixth

To the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion

Brothers and sisters, it is with deep sorrow that we inform you that three of our brothers have been assassinated. Our words are of pain and rage. We will never understand the death that the narco-paramilitary groups have imposed on our territory.

“If we don’t defend ourselves, who will defend us” were the words that the people of the Montaña Baja de Guerrero said to Andrés Manuel López Obrador on October 21. Despite the fact that the CIPOG-EZ explained their situation to the president of the republic, on the afternoon of November 5, our brothers Adán, Guillermo and Moisés were assassinated.

Our comrades went to Chilapa where they were detained by the municipal transit police at 2:40. After that, a motorcycle began to follow them and we lost contact with them completely. At approximately 9:30, they were reported to have been found dead in the town of Xochimilco, Chilapa.

We told the world, we told the president of the republic, the narco-paramilitary groups are killing us, torturing us and disappearing us. No more than fifteen days have passed and our brothers have been brutally murdered.

We hold the president of the Republic Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the governor Evelyn Salgado, the municipal president of Chilapa Aldy Esteban Román and the state and municipal police of the state of Guerrero responsible for the death of our brothers.

We will act because it is clear that the bad government is not interested in the lives of our people.

Adán Linares, Moisés Cuapipistenco and Guillermo Hilario Morales were compañeros of the Popular Indigenous Council of Guerrero, part of the National Indigenous Congress, committed to the struggle for life, the growth of the communities and the construction of a better world. For them we will live and die; we will not forget them. They will not die because we will keep their memory alive.

LONG LIVE ADÁN LINARES!

LONG LIVE MOISÉS CUAPIPISTENCO!

LONG LIVE GUILLERMO HILARIO MORALES!

ENOUGH DEATH AND PAIN!

YOURS SINCERELY: POPULAR INDIGENOUS COUNCIL OF GUERRERO-EMILIANO ZAPATA

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We Told the President of the Republic Andrés Manuel López Obrador: “They are Killing, Torturing, and Disappearing Us!”

To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation

To the National Indigenous Congress

To the Indigenous Governing Council

To the National and International Sixth

To the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion

To the peoples and communities of Guerrero

To the social movement of Guerrero

To the media

To the Human Rights organizations

November 7, 2022, a few days after the assassination of our brothers Adán, Moisés, and Guillermo.

We told him “the narco-paramilitaries kill and disappear our people!”

We told him, “We don’t want to be cannon fodder for the organized crime groups commanded by Celso Ortega Jiménez and the deputy Bernardo Ortega Jiménez.”

We told him, “We don’t want social programs, but justice, security, and for our word to be heard.”

On October 21, Andrés Manuel López Obrador pretended to listen to our words; without getting out of his car, several of our brothers and sisters from the Popular Indigenous Council of Guerrero – Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ) told him that they were killing us. We told him who, giving names and surnames, where and how. But just as if nothing had been said, we were condemned to repeat the same history, to mourn our dead and our disappeared. On November 5 three of our brothers were killed.

“Many of our comrades go to the municipal center to sell their products and they don’t come back. There they are disappeared.” That’s how clear our message was to Andrés Manuel López Obrador. As if we were predicting what was going to happen. Adán, Guillermo and Moisés, Indigenous Nahuas from the Montaña Baja region of Guerrero belonging to the CIPOG-EZ and the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), went to the municipal center of Chilapa and never came back. They were brutally murdered.

It is evident by looking at our reality that narco-paramilitary groups can assassinate any of us whenever they please. This is the reality that we have been living for more than seven years of war with the narco-group “Los Ardillos,” and that we lived before with “Los Rojos” and before that with other criminal groups, all the way back to the extermination that the Spanish tried to carry out against our ancestors. It is a reality that we no longer want to live. That is why we resist. That is why we fight every day and organize ourselves, because if we did not, we would surely have already been exterminated.

The reality of these last years is very clear:

1. The municipal government is led by Aldy Esteban Román (member of the PRI). This figure has been a member of the Guerrero state prosecutor’s office, from where, like today, he protected “Los Ardillos,” a narco-paramilitary group with wide influence in the state of Guerrero.
2. The member, one of the leaders and political operators of “Los Ardillos,” is Bernardo Ortega Jiménez, congressman (member of the PRD), who has mentioned that he has nothing to do with his brothers (that is, he accepts that they are criminals but as a public servant he overlooks the violence they generate, which makes him an accomplice and therefore a member and protector of “Los Ardillos.” Although he denies it, we know that he is an active member of the criminal group).
3. The municipal police are in collusion with “Los Ardillos.” This was made more than evident, a few months ago in Atlixtac where two of our brothers were detained and disappeared by the municipal police of Atlixtac. This time, the transit police of the Municipality of Chilapa were in charge of detaining and identifying the three members of CIPOG-EZ, informing “Los Ardillos” so that they could then be assassinated. The same thing is happening in the municipality of José Joaquín de Herrera, where other members of our organization have also been disappeared.
4. We are living through a war of extermination in which political parties, governments, police, and criminal groups are interlinked, and if we have not been exterminated it is because of our resistance and organization.

So, we see that from the federal government to the municipal government, there is a chain of complicity. As our communities are being massacred, it is as if they want to take over our territories. To do so they must exterminate those of us who live there. It is hard for us to comprehend that we have had so many disappeared and assassinated compañeros and that not a single person has been arrested for these crimes. Yet, when we look at what has happened to us in depth and appeal to history not as a commonplace, not as a discourse to demonstrate knowledge, as Andrés Manuel uses it, but as a tool to transform reality, we understand that they want to exterminate us. We also understand that we must resist in order to live.

Andrés Manuel’s response to the CIPOG-EZ’s statements were the same loose ideas, in which he appeals to history without understanding the historical processes, without connecting the causes and consequences, much less using it to avoid repeating mistakes of the past. AMLO himself is a result of the mistake, or rather, the natural result of the capitalist economic model that in order to maintain inequality in the world, requires governments that pretend to represent and listen to the people, yet manipulate the population while the life and land of the people continues to be taken away from them.

He said: “There is only one thing I say to you in all sincerity, avoid violence, there are other ways to fight, the most effective of all is non-violence. This policy of non-violence was put into practice, by Gandhi, Mandela, Luther King, and they taught us that it is possible to change things peacefully. We must not fall into provocation, we must get rid of provocation and we must seek change through peaceful means. We will continue to act peacefully and without complicity with anyone.”

To this we respond: To continue calling for non-violence in a scenario of war, without stopping those who generate it, without attacking the causes of the violence – economic, political, social and cultural – is absurd.

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Today, as we mourn our dead, rage floods us, because they were important compañeros in our organization, those who worked twice as hard, those who did not sleep for days when Los Ardillos’ bullets passed over our heads. Those who joined the front lines to resist them in order to save the lives of our communities.

But not only did they know this form of resistance, they were also involved in the political aspect of it. They were regional promoters of the CIPOG-EZ, committed to delivering workshops on autonomy, community, territory, and our peoples’ rights; committed to the installation of our community radios – Radios Organizing the Struggle for Autonomy (ROLA). In short, they represented the collective heart of CIPOG-EZ. And they did it because they had already survived torture and death and because they understood that the path was to resist and organize themselves within community. They knew the path was not in joining the ranks of organized crime groups, it was not in betraying our communities, it was not in selling out to political parties. They knew the path was in organizing our communities, in not surrendering, not selling out, nor giving up.

For them, we will keep the flame of organization and resistance alive. Because those who know the struggle say that a person dies twice. The first time is when he dies and leaves his life of struggle, the second time is when we forget his struggle, his resistance. We, the peoples and communities of the CIPOG-EZ, will not forget our brothers’ struggle, because they did not forget us in the darkest days for our communities. The next step is to continue to resist, because from death comes life, and we choose the path of life.

WE DO NOT FORGET, WE DO NOT FORGIVE!

STOP THE WAR AGAINST OUR PEOPLES!

WE WANT JUSTICE!

JUSTICE FOR OUR DEAD!

LONG LIVE ADÁN LINARES!

LONG LIVE MOISÉS CUAPIPISTENCO!

LONG LIVE GUILLERMO HILARIO MORALES!

LONG LIVE THE NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS!

LONG LIVE THE CIPOG-EZ!

LONG LIVE THE CIPOG-EZ!

LONG LIVE THE CIPOG-EZ!

ATTENTIVELY:

THE POPULAR INDIGENOUS COUNCIL OF GUERRERO – EMILIANO ZAPATA (CIPOG-EZ)