Subcommander Moisés, spokesperson for the movement, denounces “blockades, assaults, kidnappings, collection of fees, forced recruitment and shootings,” a product of the struggle between criminal groups.
Zapatismo retreats from Chiapas, in southern Mexico, while it seeks its new form, a structure that responds to the crisis situation facing the region. In a statement released this Sunday, Subcommander Moisés, spokesperson for the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), announced “the disappearance of the Zapatista Rebel Autonomous Municipalities and the Good Government of Juntas,” known as caracoles, the civil bases of the movement. “We will explain to you what the new structure of Zapatista autonomy is like and how it has been developing,” said the leader of the movement, successor to Subcommander Marcos.
Moisés’ statement is part of a series of writings that Zapatismo has released in recent months, four so far, in which he recognizes and denounces the crisis that southeastern Mexico is experiencing. “The main cities of Chiapas are in complete chaos,” says the subcommander. “The municipal presidencies are occupied by what we call ‘legal hitmen’ or ‘disorganized crime.’ There are blockades, assaults, kidnappings, rent collection, forced recruitment, shootings. This is the effect of the patronage of the State Government and the dispute over the charges that is in process. They are not political proposals that are being faced, but rather criminal societies,” he adds, in reference to the 2024 electoral process.
Zapatismo, which between December and January celebrates the 30th anniversary of its uprising against the Government, has tirelessly denounced the situation in Chiapas. Already in September 2021, the EZLN denounced that the State was on the verge of a “civil war”, after the kidnapping of two members of the Good Government Board of the town of Patria Nueva. The movement blamed the state authorities for the situation, mainly the governor, Rutilio Escandón, of Morena, and the Regional Organization of Coffee Growers of Ocosingo, for the kidnapping. Finally, the two Zapatista authorities were freed.
Violence in Chiapas is unleashed, no matter where you look at it. The poorest State in Mexico suffers from the confrontation between criminal organizations on the border with Guatemala, in the Lacandona jungle, in the Los Altos region, in the Palenque area. There are disputes between political groups in municipalities in different regions. Self-defense and paramilitary groups appear and disappear, defending variable causes, all in the face of the inability or complicity of the authorities. Last week, border residents reported the appearance of bagged bodies in the waters of the Suchiate River, on the way to the ocean.
The tone of the four messages that the EZLN has released in recent months confirm the desperation of the population. In the third, Marcos, who recently degraded himself to “insurgent captain,” collected the content of a conversation between Zapatistas, mainly he and Moisés, in which they wondered about the future of their girls and boys, in 120 years. “The storm is already upon us. The same one we warned about almost 10 years ago. The first thing we see is that the destruction comes faster. What we thought would happen in 10 years is already here,” Moisés said.
“The monster, the hydra, capitalism, is crazy, stealing and destroying. Now it wants to steal what it didn’t care about before and continues destroying what little is left. Capitalism now produces misery and those who flee from it: migrants,” said the subcommander. “Many misfortunes are coming, wars, floods, droughts, diseases, and in the midst of collapse we have to look far away. If migrants now number in the thousands, soon they will be tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands. Fights and death come between brothers, between parents and children, between neighbors, between races, between religions, between nationalities. The great buildings will burn and no one will be able to say why, or who, or for what. Although it seems not anymore, but yes, it is going to get worse,” he added.
In the fourth writing, the tone is similar. “The federal, state and local military and police forces are not in Chiapas to protect the civilian population. They have the sole objective of stopping migration. That is the order that came from the North American Government. As is their way, they have turned migration into a business. Human smuggling and trafficking are a business of the authorities who, through extortion, kidnapping and buying and selling of migrants, shamelessly enrich themselves,” denounces Moisés.
Source: El Pais
