The Sierra Madre of Chiapas Is “A Battlefield,” Warn Bishops of Mexico and Guatemala

The prelates warned that, in at least seven towns and communities, men and their families face a terror they never imagined, and ruled out that conditions exist for the extraordinary elections on August 25.

The communities and towns of Chicomuselo, Frontera Comalapa, Amatenango de la Frontera, Ángel Albino Corzo, Bejucal de Ocampo, Siltepec and Motozintla have become a “battlefield” between criminal groups that force men to go to the front to guard the pens, to close roads; they and their families face a terror they never imagined, denounced the bishops of Chiapas, Mexico and Guatemala.

In the message, addressed to the three levels of government, the bishops state that in the Sierra Madre of Chiapas “high caliber weapons are unloaded on humans, whose struggle has been to defend life, land, territory, giving service animated by the Word of God, watchmen of the dignity with which they have been clothed as an inheritance and by baptism with their constant struggles for their people to have life”.

Today, people are forced to act as human shields because of a system of death that no level of government has wanted to listen to and address at its roots. No one has given credibility to the word, to the blood shed, to the martyrs left by this self-interested war in which the people have no respite and continue to be subjected to threats,” they lament.

The message, addressed also to the creators and executors of violence, the bishops ask them to cease violence. “To the violent, we demand that they stop! Human beings are not objects to be thrown away. Life is sacred, spilled blood cries out to heaven and the heart doesn’t forget the blood that splashes us.”  

“In the name of the right to life, we make a call: come and see!”. The families have worked hard for their poor patrimony and have a right to it, meanwhile they have run for their lives, even having to cross the border,” they plead.

But the call is for the three levels of government to participate in the operations in order to achieve the disarmament of the groups fighting in the Sierra.

The deactivation and disarmament of the groups that plague the state of Chiapas is urgent. He who closes his ear to the cry of the poor will also cry out and will not receive answers (Proverbs 21:13), on the other hand, blessed is he who watches over justice, accompanies in fear, in pain and suffering, consoling, supporting, liberating, because by supporting, he will be consoled and together, with free women and men, they will inherit the promised land.

No conditions to hold extraordinary elections

The bishops of the departments of San Marcos and Huehuetenango, Guatemala, Bernabé Sagastume and Álvaro Cardenal Ramazzini Imeri; the bishop of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Rodrigo Aguilar Martínez, and the person in charge of human mobility of the Mexican Episcopal Conference (CEM), Guadalupe Torres Campos, also declare that, a few days before the electoral process in three municipalities, violence has “intensified” in those territories.

“It was demonstrated, there are no conditions” for the development of extraordinary elections scheduled for this August 25 in the municipalities of Chicomuselo, Pantelhó and Capitán Luis Ángel Vidal, “the costs are serious”.

They pointed out that “the electoral process intensifies the violence in territories where economic, political and extractive interests, coming from outside, have marked options, positions and struggles that only with weapons and extermination groups that operate without control and with impunity could be swept away. 

Source: Proceso