The armed attacks perpetrated by criminal organizations in indigenous communities in Chiapas, Chihuahua and Michoacán are sinister: they invade territories, destroy habitat, forcibly displace families, rape women and girls, disappear and murder community members who resist. Their destructive power pulverizes community life and destroys all the natural resources that the people have preserved for centuries.
The absence and complicity of the authorities is atrocious. They make the facts invisible, trivialize the aggressions and silence the atrocities committed. They do not respond to calls for help or provide protection to the victims. They allow the violence to escalate and the attacked population to seek survival by their own means. They justify the armed incursions as a dispute between organized crime groups. The facts are not investigated, much less are the investigation files prosecuted. Impunity prevails and the criminal structure remains intact.
The gunshots furrow the paths of blood, and the murdered are left lying in the fields as dismal marks of criminal barbarity. Predatory agents continue to encircle indigenous territories. The cacique governments, now allied with criminal groups, remain unscathed with their clientelistic and gangster politics; the political parties dispute municipal presidencies and local deputies with ill-gotten money; the mining businessmen make pacts with organized crime and sow terror to devastate the natural landscape and overexploit the aquifers.
The loggers set up clandestine sawmills, burn the forest to enter the forest reserves, hire hitmen to transfer and sell timber and drugs. Community authorities are subordinated to the interests of organized crime. Their territories are disputed and used as strategic enclaves for crime. The mega-projects imposed by the federal government weaken the autonomous organization of the peoples, fragment the communities, and relegate them as central actors in their own development, commercializing their archaeological legacy and folklorizing the greatness of their culture.
Indigenous regions, being centers of resistance and rebellion, face wars of extermination and counterinsurgency strategies implemented by ethnocidal governments that sow terror. The fierce persecution against the rebels is systematic and they are obstinate in breaking the communal core. They have installed military zones in strategic places. They try to enlist the young men in the army and offer marriage to the girls. They want to truncate at any cost the future of the new indigenous generations that seek to forge a society of equals within their community spaces. The governments in power, through the militarization of their territories, the narcotization of their economy and the proliferation of criminal groups, de facto declare war on the indigenous peoples in order to subjugate them and derail their struggles for autonomy and self-determination.
The old-style integrationist policies and the implementation of new programs for individual benefit deepen government dependence, leaving intact the structures of cacique power; the security apparatus linked to organized crime remains untouched; the vices of a mercantilist and racist justice system persist; the economic exploitation and vassalage of the indigenous people expelled from their ancestral territories by landowners, businessmen, organized crime and government megaprojects is further deepened. The subjugation of community life, which is the hard core of the peoples’ resistance, is cracked by the gunfire of criminal groups that have set themselves up as the armed arms of the government in power.
In the Sierra Tarahumara, organized crime has diversified its illicit activities. For the past decade, illegal logging has been covered up with logging permits. Illegal logging became criminal logging because it was imposed on the ejidos under the armed coercion of criminals. In 2023, organized crime took control of the most important ejidos in the Huachochi Mesa.
The forests of the Sierra Tarahumara are in the hands of criminals. Its forest mass has decreased alarmingly; from 2001 to 2023 it lost 21,800 hectares to fires. The most affected municipalities are Bocoina, Guerrero, Madera, Huachochi, Guadalupe y Calvo, Uruachi and Chinipas. Recently, more than 300 people from the communities of Cinco Llagas, El Cajoncito, El Pie de la Cuesta, Las Casas, Los Placeres, El Silverio and La Trampa in the municipality of Guadalupe y Calvo were displaced by organized crime. They are crowded together in the community of Cinco Llagas, without food and in fear of being attacked by armed groups.
On September 4, in the municipality of Frontera Comalapa, Chiapas, confrontations between organized crime groups intensified. The population is hiding in their homes because of the constant shootings. They have no food and are held hostage by the criminals who prevent them from leaving the community. The criminals went from house to house to forcibly recruit all the young people and minors. Mothers are desperate over the disappearance of their husbands and sons. No authorities intervene to protect them and guarantee a safe exit from their communities.
In the Nahua community of El Coire, municipality of Aquila, Michoacán, from August 13 to 19, several groups of the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (CJNG) attacked the population; they disappeared 7 young people, murdered two, tortured several people and raped women. They looted houses and small businesses. The municipal authorities of Aquila counted 211 displaced persons, 76 of whom are under 12 years of age. In addition to Coire, the communities of Chacalapa, Zilapa, El Diezmo and El Salitre were also attacked by the CJNG groups. Most families fled and found refuge in Aquila and Coahuayana. The authorities have allowed division to flourish and crime to take control of the indigenous communities. The army only made one patrol on the day of the CJNG irruption, to justify the call made by the community. The criminal groups know that patrols by state agents are sporadic and that they will never stay in one place. They have sized up the situation and that is how they can act with total impunity.
The federal authorities have failed to guarantee the security of the indigenous population held hostage by criminal groups. What is unacceptable is the inaction of the security forces in the face of the armed invasions that assault community territories, displace the local population, murder defenseless people, disappear people, rape women and recruit young people and children. The security politics have left the indigenous population defenseless. They have allowed organized crime to subjugate them in order to break their communal nucleus. The indigenous reform that is on the horizon will not help to solve these serious problems, because they are denied the right to control their land and natural assets and their political representation before the legislatures is not recognized.
Original text by Abel Barrera published in Desinformémonos on September 18th, 2024.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.