Civil Society Organization “Las Abejas de Acteal” (The Bees of Acteal)
Sacred Land of the Martyrs of Acteal
Municipality of Chenalhó, Chiapas, Mexico.
December 22, 2022.
To the National Indigenous Congress
To the Indigenous Council of Government
To the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
To the Believing People of the Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas
To the Defenders of Human Rights
To the Free and Alternative Media
To the National and International Media
To the National and International Civil Society
They killed us small and defenseless;
now, we are memory, we are infinite light.
Sisters and brothers:
Today before the sacred mountains as witnesses, we give our word in a living voice, in the name of our grandmothers and grandfathers who have fought for a dignified and just life and, in the name of our Martyrs of Acteal, together with the survivors and relatives of the victims of the Massacre and the members of the Civil Society Organization Las Abejas de Acteal.
Our heart is the guardian of the memory of our own history and journey as peoples, that is why we do not forget that on December 22nd we were born as Bees. So today we celebrate our 30th anniversary. Also our heart, as a wake keeps the tragic event of the Acteal Massacre. So time and memory, birth and death as transfiguration mark us this December 22nd commemorating our 45 massacred brothers and sisters plus the 4 unborn babies taken from their mothers’ wombs in this site of Acteal; All of them were massacred by PRI and Cardenista paramilitaries in the municipality of Chenalhó, Chiapas, on December 22, 1997, as part of the counterinsurgency war of the Chiapas 94 Campaign Plan, designed by the Secretary of National Defense and the PRI government of Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León.
So today the Spirit of Life and death mark our cycle, today we celebrate birth and death at the same time. It would seem that death is the great end of everything, but it turns out that it is the beginning of the victory of memory and as one of the great masters said: Do this in commemoration of me. Thus we are commemorating our birth and death as perpetuity of memory and remembrance, memory that is our own history and walk.
It seems that tragedy has marked us in different ways. Injustice and abuse of power made us be born. In the movement and in the journey we began to see the light as “Las Abejas” Organization, on December 22, 1992. The light of our conscience was already there and that pushed us to go on pilgrimage from Chenalhó to the CERESO (Center for Social Readaptation) No. 5 in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas. This non-violent political action was to demand the release of our 5 brothers from Tzajalch’en, unjustly accused of having murdered a person who were arbitrarily detained on December 10, 1992. The sum of the outrageous facts and our action gave birth to our Organization Las Abejas. And as Believing People of the Diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas, convinced and inspired by the life and work of Jesus, we chose, as He did, the non-violent struggle to transform our realities.
That is why sisters and brothers, today in this Sacred Land that carries and embraces us like a mother embraces her baby, we come to commemorate the memory of our Martyrs of Acteal, but at the same time celebrate the Life and Struggle of Las Abejas; because in spite of so much pain and suffering that we have gone through throughout our 30 years of walking, here we continue in resistance and with dignity on high.
Sisters and brothers, feel at home, may the Peace of our Martyrs be in your hearts.
The 30 years of our journey has not been easy and we know that we did not do it alone, nor would we have been able to continue without the accompaniment of God the Father-Mother, who through his envoy the prophet and Pastor jTotik Samuel Ruiz García, may our gratitude to him fly from the mountains of Acteal and reach heaven where we know he now lives with God the Father-Mother and our Martyrs of Acteal; because as jTotik Samuel and other servants of the liberating church taught us to read the bible that God gives us his love, his peace, his justice and his freedom to any inhabitant of the face of the earth.
Every day that Father Sun rises in the east, before we prepare our steps to walk in peace, to build justice, we thank him and ask him to illuminate our path in moments of darkness and uncertainty.
Just as when the Acteal Massacre happened, our brother catechist Alonso Vázquez Gómez, days before the Massacre, spoke with the women and men here in Acteal, that we must not be afraid, but we must ask God for strength and faith; because this is the teaching of Jesus our Master and this is the method of struggle of Las Abejas; we must ask for spiritual strength, we must ask for wisdom because we want to live in peace, we want justice in our town, we want our daughters and sons to run, play, and grow up free and happy in our own lands.
Some of the components of our option for peace and our being and of assuming nonviolence as a life commitment have been fasting and prayer. That is why in those difficult years of the counterinsurgency war, our sisters and brothers of Acteal were fasting and praying. They had already been there for two days when the paramilitaries came to massacre them with cruelty, premeditation and malice aforethought on December 22, 1997. Both in the past and in the present, the plan of the rich, the politicians, governments and the Mexican Army, is to exterminate us because they are uncomfortable with and despise our struggles and the defense of Mother Earth, the Defense of Human Rights and Life.
Twenty-five years have passed since the Acteal massacre and to date this State crime continues to go unpunished. As we have been denouncing month after month for a quarter of a century, the PRI, PAN or Morenista governments, instead of applying justice, have created strategies and policies of attrition towards our organization. This has been their custom to bury the truth and bury justice. Only that we are characterized by the tenacity and stubborn memory of long duration that we have woven.
Of the strategies and policies of attrition of both the State and the governments, we can point out that during the government of PAN member Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, he allowed the ill-named Court of Justice of the Nation to free the paramilitary perpetrators of the Acteal massacre. It massively freed those responsible for the Acteal massacre on August 12, 2009. The intention of this act was to cover up the intellectual authors such as Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, Emilio Chuayffet, Julio César Ruiz Ferro, General Enrique Cervantes Aguirre, General Mario Renán Castillo, Uriel Jarquin Gálvez, Jorge Enrique Hernández Aguilar, David Gómez Guzmán, among others.
The other strategy of the State has been the delay of justice, which has caused two divisions in our organization. The first in 2008 and the second in 2014. With these divisions it has sought to antagonize us, weaken us and make us abandon our nonviolent struggle. But the government and its accomplices ignore and forget our stubbornness and tenacity that have become a virtue to re-exist and imagine a dignified life. They also forget that we are descendants of the wise Mayan women and men, that consciousness and resistance live in our guts.
Since 2005, when we saw that the Mexican justice system did not have the capacity and political will to investigate and punish the material and intellectual authors of the Acteal Massacre, we decided to go before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), so that the Mexican State would recognize that the Acteal Massacre was a State crime and that those responsible would be investigated and punished. But the IACHR has been late to issue the merits report, which since 2015 was in that stage, that is to say that since that year it could have issued such a merits report, avoiding wear and tear on both the survivors and relatives of the victims of Acteal and Las Abejas. Now we are informed that the merits stage of case 12,790 Manuel Sántiz Culebra and Others (Acteal Massacre) is already listed in the IACHR. So at any moment the merits report will be issued and finally the Mexican State will answer for the crime it has committed here in Acteal.
The 25 years of impunity in the Acteal Massacre has generated endless conflicts in the communities of Chenalhó towards the members of our organization Las Abejas. The municipality of Chenalhó has been dominated by violence since 1997.
The current municipal president of Chenalhó of the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico, originally from the Puebla colony (also the birthplace of paramilitaries such as the Miguel Utrilla Los Chorros colony), where its inhabitants and community authorities have displaced members of our organization on several occasions, maintains several unresolved conflicts such as the dismantling of water and electricity services to Las Abejas families in the communities of Campo Los Toros and Bach’en, and the constant discrediting of our resistance and our different way of thinking from theirs.
Impunity in the Acteal Massacre has not only brought sadness and decomposition of the social and community fabric in Chenalhó, but has caused unimaginable violence throughout Mexico. We can no longer only say that the Mexican justice system is rotten, but that it is going from bad to worse. It seems that paramilitaries and organized crime have allied themselves; when the Mexican State cannot directly send its soldiers to assassinate a defender of human rights and life, it asks or allows a hit man from organized crime to do the dirty work. This is what happened to the human rights and life defender Samir Flores Soberanes of Amiltzingo, Morelos. And a year ago, on July 5, 2021, they cowardly assassinated our comrade and brother Simón Pedro Pérez López. These cases, and many others that we have not finished listing, is the response of the Mexican State that it offers to the survivors of the Acteal Massacre, instead of true justice.
The crime of our comrade and brother Simón Pedro, remains unpunished, the administrators of justice in charge are delaying the process of justice. Nothing has changed in the justice system in a government that claims to be of 4 transformation or of the “left”. The jails are still full of poor and innocent people or human rights defenders, environmentalists who were charged under torture and inhumane treatment. But on the other hand, the ex-governors and politicians responsible for the Acteal massacre, the forced disappearance of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa, the femicides and other atrocious cases, enjoy total impunity, or have public posts or from their comforts plan looting and dispossession of lands and territories of the organized native peoples.
Sisters and brothers, the impunity agreed upon by the State, the death loaded with discrimination and indifference, the vulgar lies and traps as a continuity of the counterinsurgency that we have gone through during the 25 years of the Acteal Massacre, have made us stronger. It has reaffirmed our conscience and conviction in resistance and in the construction of a more just and humane world, it has matured and flourishes in our journey. Pain and death have led us to be defenders of human rights, of Mother Earth and of Life. We will not give up for peace and justice. Although the masters and supreme governments may be uncomfortable, our word will always be true, it will always be light in the dark times of life in Mexico.
Today it is time to take stock of our life and struggle; it is time to celebrate our achievements and the fruits of our suffering and effort, to learn from our mistakes, from which we have risen to grow our dignity and not to twist the path left to us by those who gave their lives so that today we have greater clarity in our path as an organization.
The Acteal Massacre made us structure our organization well, we decided to have a Board of Directors as legitimate authorities of Las Abejas, we decided to have our own commissaries responsible for resolving land problems; we decided to have our own judges in charge of resolving family problems. We also created areas of Health, Acteal Choir, Theater Group, Artisan Women, Women of Caja de Ahorro and Communication. We also created productive projects such as: cattle, beehives, chickens, vegetables, etc. We also have works of water and energy care, although some works are slow, but we are aware that they are part of the construction of a more humane world and of our autonomy and self-determination, which are the fruit of the mother earth that surrounds us.
Today marks the end of a cycle of our struggle, but it does not mean that this is the end of our journey. The struggle has no end, no limits, no expiration date. Just as the Word of God, Father-Mother, never ends.
Acteal will always remain the Sacred Land. Acteal has become the House of Memory and Hope.
The spring of water that emanates from this Sacred Land is a symbol of the inexhaustible conviction of Nonviolent Struggle.
And we Las Abejas are and will be the guardians of Memory and Hope, of the history that our grandmothers and grandfathers have inherited from us, in this commitment to be builders of Peace and Justice.
Today a cycle closes. Today new paths towards truth are opened. Today new hopes are born.
25 years ago here in Acteal was “the saddest Christmas”, as our Tatik Samuel said. Today, we affirm with our 30 years of walking Las Abejas: 30 times our dignity shines in giant fragments of light in the midst of the sacred mountains that guard the heartbeat of the people and under the sky that covers the dreams and hopes of Acteal.
This has been our word after 25 years of Memory and construction of Another Justice that dignifies our Martyrs of Acteal and on the day of the celebration of our 30 years of recognizing ourselves as peacemakers in the long journey of the Nonviolent struggle.
From Acteal, House of Memory and Hope.
Sincerely.
The Voice of the Civil Society Organization The Bees of Acteal