To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
To the National Indigenous Congress-Indigenous Council of Government
To Unsubmissive Europe
To the signatories of the Declaration for Life
To the peoples, organizations, collectives, civil human rights organizations and rebellious people of Mexico and the world
To the people in general
To the bad government
Five years have passed since the murder of our brother Samir Flores Soberanes without truth and justice for the motives of his assassination and punishment of those responsible by the institutions obliged to provide justice.
Taking pieces of a puzzle to show a picture, we accompany this communiqué with a small map of actors and messages that have come to public light regarding the murder of Samir Flores Soberanes. We present it for you to see and tell us what you see, because, although the image, the connections, the motives, the contexts, the messages are there, for some the pieces of the puzzle show obvious relationships, but for others (such as the Prosecutor’s Office), they do not even see them.The map shows 4 colors that are the main lines of investigation that the Morelos Prosecutor raised about Samir’s murder in 2019. In red, there is the organized crime line of investigation, that he was killed by the Tlahuica Commando for “fucking gossip”, what the prosecutor’s cardboard said (“that was lost”); another line of investigation is blue and is the one that could be for a labor lawsuit that Samir won along with other former workers of the Temoac City Hall who were unfairly dismissed approximately 20 years ago, which generated a significant debt for the municipality, putting the President of Temoac Valentin N. as the main suspect; The third line of investigation in purple is related to the conflict over a plot of land destined for an elementary school that belongs to the ejido of Amilcingo, where construction was carried out without the consent of the ejido, by the CFE as part of the social works imposed on Amilcingo for the installation of the Morelos Gas Pipeline, in this conflict Humberto N, the main leader of the shock group against the resistance that Samir promoted in his community against the Gas Pipeline.
And the fourth and fifth line of investigation that the Prosecutor’s Office had, was for reasons of Samir’s work as an indigenous communicator and opponent of the Morelos Integral Project, as you can see, this is a yellow line and could continue in a cyclical manner for almost the entire map, but it is not so, because the Prosecutor’s Office does not see any of that, and nothing of what can be seen there has been done.
It seems that the lines of investigation about organized crime, labor demand and conflict at the elementary school were the most worked by the Morelos Prosecutor’s Office and there is even a detainee, Javier “N”. But in the theory of the case of the Morelos Prosecutor’s Office, the 4 people who are probably responsible for the material execution of Samir are not part of the Comando Tlahuica; in fact, two are from one criminal group and the detainee is from a different group. The Morelos Prosecutor’s Office presented these four people, but without stating the motives for murdering Samir, which are therefore likely to be related to any line of investigation.
The line of investigation into the murder of Samir because of his opposition to the PIM and his work as a communicator was not explored for four and a half years by the Morelos Prosecutor’s Office. In August 2023, pressure from the people led to the attraction of the case to the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Attention to Crimes Committed against Freedom of Expression (FEADLE), part of the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic. This implies that the line of investigation ignored by the Morelos Prosecutor’s Office, Samir’s participation in the fight against the Morelos Integral Project and his work as an indigenous communicator, will be pursued. We would add: in the context of an illegal consultation imposed by the President of the Republic where the public opinion of the region was important and Samir was key in the information and public opinion that people could have at the time of casting their vote on the megaproject and even organizing.
There is a very large, clear and full of edges thread around the Morelos Integral Project and the murder of Samir, you paint the map as you see fit and join the lines of the colors you consider and tell us: Who ordered Samir’s murder? Why are the investigations not progressing?
Samir’s case has been with the FEADLE for six months and to date no hearing has been held to continue with the investigations and the process. So, in the face of so much silence from the authorities, we make this map of actors and messages around the murder of our brother Samir Flores Soberanes available to the FEADLE, so that it can speed up its investigations and weave the threads it needs to weave.
In any case, in this map you can clearly see that organized crime and the imposition of a megaproject such as the Morelos Integral Project are directly related, just as they are in the Inter-Oceanic Corridor, the Mayan Train, open-pit mining, the dispute over territory in Santa María Ostula and hundreds of other places in our country.
In some places they occupy criminal groups, in others shock groups, in other cases criminalization, intimidation, defamation, militarization, all this has happened since 2012 to date in the struggle against the MIP and its related projects.
That is why 5 years after the murder of Samir, we denounce what the judiciary has not wanted to see, nor investigate and we demand that they do their job, because although we no longer believe in this system of capitalist government, we demand and will continue to demand punishment for those responsible for the murder of Samir, because while they are in power or not, they must answer for what they did, we know that they will not want to respond, but that is why we must force them to respond in a civil and peaceful manner and one tool is the denunciation. Denounce what is evident and the government does not want to see, denounce the innumerable human rights violations caused by the PIM. To demand an end to impunity.
Therefore, we ANNOUNCE that, in the search and construction of justice, 5 years after the murder of Samir, we will soon be presenting a report of human rights violations caused by the PIM, for which we ask for your diffusion, coverage and support.
We will continue to struggle in the construction and reconstruction of the autonomy of our peoples in the face of the defense of life that we have to carry out in our territories in the face of innumerable problems caused by predatory capitalism.
… here we are Samir and here we will continue.
T’neki tlalle uan atl para tenochti, amo timikiske por tumi
We want land and water for all, not to die for money.
Peoples’ Front in Defense of Land and Water, Morelos, Puebla, Tlaxcala