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Escalation in Chiapas: Priest assassinated, attacks on Zapatista communities

Escalation in Chiapas: Priest assassinated, attacks on Zapatista communities

Social movements denounce murder of Mexican priest as conflict intensifies with state-complicit cartels

~ Mateo Sgambati ~

Amid reports of attacks against Zapatista communities in southeast Mexico, an activist Jesuit priest who denounced the drug cartels has been murdered. Marcelo Perez, a priest who was known for the defending the rights of Indigenous communities, was gunned down in the city of San Cristobal de las Casas on 20 October just after he led a Sunday service.

According to the newspaper La Jornada, the priest had a price put on his head by the drug cartels operating along the Guatemalan border, often with full complicity of the local police and politicians. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) had ordered the Mexican State to take precautionary measures in his case, which were not complied with, and the prosecutor’s office knew who intended to kill him. Perez was quoted as having said, “I know that at any moment something could happen to me. But my faith is greater than my death. It’s worth risking my life for peace”.

Meanwhile, inhabitants of the lands recovered by the Zapatistas in one of the local autonomous government areas have been subject to attacks and threats from residents of a neighbouring community, supported by the Chiapas state government. In response to the escalation of threats, Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés has announced the possibility of canceling the series of International Meetings of Rebellions and Resistances: The Storm and the Day After, previously scheduled for late December of this year and early January 2025, as they do not believe there is security for attendees in any area of Chiapas.

Ever since the Zapatista uprising won the autonomy for Mexico’s indigenous peoples through the San Andrés Accords of 1996, a counterinsurgency war has been ongoing in the south-east region against the Zapatista communities. However, violence within the state of Chiapas has intensified in recent years. Multiple attempts have been made to draw the attention of federal authorities to the fact that Chiapas is on the verge of civil war. Kidnappings, murders, threats, and blockades are widespread throughout the state. Clashes between different cartels continue without interruption in regions that form the last frontier in Mexican territory before reaching Guatemala, where Indigenous groups denounce the collusion of state authorities with organised crime groups.

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