The Rise of Evangelical Paramilitaries in Chiapas

Twenty of the paramilitaries who were among the material authors of the Acteal Massacre in 1997 were released from prison on 12^th August 2009, and the cases of 37 more are under review. A week later, documents were declassified which prove that the Mexican government  and its army authorized the paramilitary activity in Chiapas which led to the massacre. The Acteal massacre was, therefore, un crimen de estado (a state crime) perpetrated by the government of President Ernesto Zedillo. The message sent, that of impunity for atrocity, has encouraged the growing presence of armed paramilitary groups already active in the area. The men are members of the Army of God, an evangelical group. Violence is increasing and tension is high.

Twenty Acteal assassins released                                                        

"If they free the paramilitaries, they'll come back to kill us".                                            

In Acteal, the oldest of the old say that those who die with their eyes open will always  come back to point out their assassins....                                                                             

Las Abejas, the Bees, are a grassroots Catholic pacifist organization of honey-gatherers and coffee growers, who support the Zapatistas' aims and demands, but as a non-violent group, would not take up arms. They fled their homes in 1997 after repeated attacks from groups of armed evangelical supporters of the PRI, and took refuge at the Zapatista community of Acteal. On 22^nd December 1997, they were gathered at the Catholic church praying for peace, when they were attacked by a group of armed men. The shooting continued all day, as the attackers scoured the hillside to ensure no one had escaped, while forty police officers in the nearby schoolhouse did nothing. Fifteen children, twenty-one women and nine men were slain that day, and four unborn babies ripped from their mothers' wombs: "we must destroy the seed". Both the killers and the killed were indigenous Tzotziles..                                                                                           

 No senior official of a municipal, state or federal authority,or member of the army, has ever been held to account, and the intellectual authors of the massacre continue to evade justice. Fifty-seven Tzotziles were eventually imprisoned, members of the local community, well-known to the victims and survivors. On 13 August, twenty of these material authors of the massacre were released on the grounds, not of innocence, but of procedural errors in their prosecutions. A judicial decision on the appeals of over thirty other prisoners is expected imminently.  The Frayba Centre calls this release ‘a crime against humanity'.                                                                                                                                                                            There are now very real fears that the freed killers will take revenge against the survivors. In effect it gives impunity to paramilitary groups. A complete mockery has been made of the whole Mexican justice system.

Fear and tension                                                                                                                                 

Tension is now extremely high in the highlands area, and army and police patrols have increased. The president of Las Abejas has reported that the paramilitary groups are reorganizing and that EZLN insurgents are deploying throughout the mountains. 

Comments from Amnesty International                                                                              

"This is yet another example of the serious deficiencies of the Mexican justice system, which seems to be incapable of investigating, prosecuting and punishing through a fair trial those responsible for human rights violations," said Rupert Knox, Mexico researcher at Amnesty International. "The Mexican authorities must begin a new independent investigation into the Acteal massacre in order to ensure that all those responsible are brought to justice. Without justice, the authorities are condemning the community to the danger of more violence."

Documents prove government links with paramilitary groups

Newly declassified US documents, released a week after the freeing of the prisoners, confirm that Presidents Salinas and Zedillo, through the Mexican army, promoted and encouraged the development of paramilitary groups in Chiapas since mid-1994. This was as part of a comprehensive counterinsurgency operation against Zapatista support bases that included arming and training, co-ordination of intelligence, and protection from local authorities.  The documents show that paramilitary groups, including those that participated in the Acteal massacre, were under the direct supervision of army intelligence agencies. The magazine Proceso has published the names of those responsible for the counterinsurgency, calling them ‘the contras of Chiapas'.                               

At the request of the Pentagon, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) confirmed that paramilitary groups "were under the supervision of Mexican military intelligence during the time the massacre in Acteal took place, with Ernesto Zedillo holding the position of Executive" and in possession of "presidential authority". Kate Doyle, Director of the Mexican Project at the National Security Archive, says these documents clearly contradict the official history of the Acteal massacre, which presented it as the result of an inter-community conflict. Ernesto Zedillo, supreme intellectual author of the massacre, is now Director of Yale University's Centre for Globalisation Studies.

The Mesoamerica Project and the new super-highway                                                                 

 The new Palenque Integrally Planned Highway being built from San Cristobal de Las Casas to Palenque is the latest phase of the Mesoamerica Project, formerly known as the Plan Puebla Panama. This plan is designed to develop infrastructure to allow a dramatic expansion of trade, tourism, and multi-national corporate exploitation and plunder. The plan includes ports, airports, dams, bridges and roads. Central to this development in Chiapas are plans for the new Palenque Integral Centre (CIP), a massive tourist development to be located between the Agua Azul waterfalls and the ruins of Palenque, with hotels, restaurants, spas, travel agencies and a ‘theme park'. Construction of the 174 km road has now started near Rancho Nuevo military base.                                                                                                                                                          While the government remains secretive about the exact route of the new highway, the route will cut through indigenous territory, occupied by communities in resistance, members of the Other Campaign and Zapatista support bases, "opposed to sacrificing their lands on the altar of tourism". This has already led to confrontations. The road-building will also destroy areas of cloud forest, and for 70 km pass through the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor.

The use of paramilitaries to facilitate building the road                                                             

In the area of the planned Palenque Integral Centre, it is reported that the state and federal police are actively supporting, arming, and training a group called OPDDIC, the Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Campesino Rights, with the aim of driving out, or repressing into submission, the indigenous communities opposed to losing their lands and homes. OPDDIC members report to the police that Other Campaign members or Zapatista support bases have committed crimes, and the police detain and torture these people under the protection of the army. The crimes, such as highway robbery, have often been committed by the OPDDIC members.                                      

In the community of Jotola, the inhabitants say the OPDDIC members are guilty of "narcotics trafficking, murder and the theft of horses".                                                                  

Members of the Regional Association of Coffee Growers of Ocosingo (ORCAO) have been harassing the community of Bosque Bonito in the autonomous municipality 17 de Noviembre, attacking them and selling their lands.

Evangelical paramilitaries in Mitzitón                                                                                     

 The new highway is designated to start in, and run through the middle of, the community of Mitzitón, in the rural part of San Cristóbal de las Casas municipality . The majority of ejido members belong to the Other Campaign, and are in resistance to the road.  A group of heavily armed evangelicals in the community, the no cooperantes, who already have a reputation for people trafficking, are in favour of the road. They support, and are supported by, the PRD state government. On July 21, many witnesses report thet Aurelio Díaz Hernández was run over and killed by a truck driven by a member of this evangelical group, while demonstrating against the new highway. At least 5 other members of the Other Campaign were injured at the same time.                                                                                                                                               

Alas de Águila 2000 (Wings of the Eagle) and el Ejército de Dios (the Army of God), are evangelical groups organized on paramilitary lines, who claim as members the paramilitaries who committed the Acteal massacre. The defence of these paramilitaries was organized by the religious leaders of these groups under the government-funded Centre for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE). Again through CIDE, they and their commander-in-chief, Esdras Alonso, are suing the Fray Bartolomé Human Rights Centre, community leaders in Mitzitón, and Hermann Bellinghausen from La Jornada, for defamation of character (calling them paramilitaries). In recent weeks the Army of God has become much more visible in the streets of San Cristobal, marching in military formation and military uniform, with military officers, demonstrating their force and power.                                                   

"The non-cooperating army of god, that killed our comrade, arrived with a truck full of migrant brothers. We want to prevent further smuggling in our territory, to make sure none of the people of our community will be run over or attacked again." - Mitziton.                                                                                                              

Indigenous communities campaign together against the new road                                               

A six-hour roadblock was held by over a thousand Other Campaign adherents in support of their demands for the cessation of the planned highway in August 2009. This was followed by a press conference held by followers of the Other Campaign representing three communities seriously affected by the construction of the San Cristobal-Palenque highway: Mitzitón, Jotolá and San Sebastián Bachajón. Representatives denounced the current situation, saying they are faced with "bad neoliberal projects that offer no benefit to indigenous people in any way" and the plundering of their land which "threatens our very presence on it".                                                                                                                

Other Campaign members from Mitzitón condemned the fact that after a month there has been no arrest made in the murder case of Aurelio Diaz Hernandez. They also reported that paramilitaries continue to "threaten with their guns, firing them often into the air during the evening and night" and that public officials from the Ministry of Communication and Transportation have made new attempts to "trick us into signing a meeting certificate to give them permission to pass through our territory to build the highway to Palenque."                                                                                                                                                                                Members of the Other Campaign in San Sebastián Bachajón demanded the "immediate release" of political prisoners Geronimo Gomez Saragos and Antonio Gomez Saragos, who were arrested in April. They also demanded that arrest warrants for another four people be withdrawn. They reported the recent "illegal occupation of their land by state and federal police" and said members of the Other Campaign have been threatened by OPDDIC.                                                                                                                                                                                   The Jotolá communal landowners have received similar threats and said OPDDIC members are "firing their guns, scaring our families and our children."                                   

In conclusion, the representatives of the three communities explained that they had met on this occasion to defend their land, their rights and their indigenous culture that "the bad government wants to destroy and continue destroying like they did with our ancestors."

The families, friends and neighbours of the victims of Acteal are still hoping for justice.

"We've become a country of assassinations, massacres and genocides, without culpability; a country of innocents, a country of irresponsible people who go through life without being accountable to anyone, a nation mired in impunity" - Jorge Camil