To the peoples of Mexico and the world,
To human rights organizations and collectives,
To the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion,
To the National and International Adherents of Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, To the signatories of A Declaration for Life on the five continents,
To an unsubdued, dignified, and rebellious Europe,
To the free and independent media,
To all who walk the path of life.
Urgent Statement:
With profound sorrow and anger, we denounce that on October 31st, 2025, authorities and members of the Regional Coordinating Committee of Community Authorities – Community Police – Founding Peoples (CRAC-PC-PF) and the Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ) were attacked with firearms by the criminal group Los Ardillos while traveling to an assembly in Ayahualtempa, Guerrero. In this armed attack, which lasted approximately ten hours, three community police officers from the Founding Peoples system, members of CIPOG-EZ and CRAC-PC-PF, were killed, and seven more were seriously wounded. Additionally, during the attack, the truck carrying our colleague Jesús Plácido Galindo, a member of our Coordination and Monitoring Commission and the target of the aggression, was struck by multiple bullets, from which he fortunately emerged unharmed. The communities of the CIPOG-EZ have repeatedly denounced that these criminal groups operate under the protection and with the complicity of state and federal authorities.
The Indigenous communities of the Lower Mountain region of Guerrero, organized in the CIPOG-EZ, comprised mainly of Nahua, Me’phaa, Na Savi, Ñomndaa, and mestizo peoples, have faced a systematic offensive of narco-paramilitary violence for years. In the last decade alone, the tragic toll of 66 members murdered and 23 more missing has been recorded, victims of the extreme violence perpetrated by criminal groups, such as Los Ardillos, who act in collusion with governments of all stripes to dispossess the Indigenous communities of the Guerrero mountains of their territory. This violence seeks to impose territorial dispossession and punish the dignified struggle of the CIPOG-EZ for life, autonomy, and justice, in the face of a capitalist system that has sown misery, exploitation, and violence in their communities.
In Guerrero and throughout the country, governments, criminal groups, and capitalist enterprises are one and the same; and they have turned the CIPOG-EZ communities into a permanent target of attacks, while those directly responsible enjoy impunity. This is a war strategy that combines repression, militarization, criminalization, and indiscriminate killings to dismantle the community organization.
There are no exceptions. Municipal governments, the state government—whose governor has direct ties to criminal leaders—and the federal government are all responsible, through their omission and complicity, for the criminal and paramilitary violence against the communities of CIPOG-EZ, CRAC-PC-PF, and our comrade Jesús Plácido Galindo. It is their security and justice institutions that protect criminal groups and impede the exercise of Indigenous autonomy.
We demand punishment for those materially and intellectually responsible for the attacks and the murder of the three community police officers from Ayahualtempa, as well as for the other 63 members of CIPOG-EZ who were killed, for the 23 disappeared comrades, and for the hundreds wounded and displaced, and for the widows and orphans who are victims of this war.
The bullets that kill our comrades will not destroy their example or extinguish the dignity of the peoples who defend life. Each act of aggression confirms that the Mexican state, now cloaked in the criminal and deceitful guise of the Fourth Transformation, continues its war against the people, a war that seeks to break autonomy, impose fear, and pave the way for dispossession. But the people remain standing, like a root that does not die and like a flower that is reborn in the wounded earth.
From our territories, we call upon communities, collectives, solidarity organizations, and people of good heart to remain vigilant and stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters of the CIPOG-EZ in the face of the alarming violence against them.
The word and the struggle of the people will not be silenced. Because our roots are deep and because our dead, our fallen comrades, taught us not to be afraid.
Sincerely,
November 2025
For the Integral Reconstitution of Our Peoples
Never Again a Mexico Without Us
National Indigenous Congress – Indigenous Governing Council
Zapatista Army of National Liberation
Original statement at Enlace Zapatista, November 3rd, 2025.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.