Inhabitants of Chicomuselo, Chiapas insist that there were 20 dead after a clash of cartels; state prosecutor’s office denies violence.
Refugees in neighboring municipalities, residents of Chicomuselo, Chiapas – who are now displaced – narrated in an interview how, days before the clashes between the Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) and Sinaloa cartels, in which they insist more than 20 people died, including at least two young people from their community who were hit by bullets, armed men from one of the groups came to demand that they join them.
According to testimonies collected by El Financiero, prior to the clashes on January 4 and 5, groups of criminals arrived at several villages and demanded a list of men to participate in the blockades that prevented the passage of the opposite cartel.
But the population refused. “They said clearly that they did not want anything, and that they would please go back,” says one of the residents. The cartel’s response was to start an offensive against the population. “They threw some grenades outside the village and shot to make people afraid, fearful and say that they were going to join them, but the people did not want to join.” One of the people who agreed to speak in an interview detailed that the members of the criminal group toured the villages of Nueva Morelia, San Antonio Ocotal, Galicia, Piedra Labrada, Buenavista and Miguel Alemán.
In all of them they demand that people participate. The only way out they saw – he explained – was to leave the communities. “Then the people emigrated, they left, they vacated their houses, they left their houses abandoned, because they threatened them to death.” After this event, in the same area, the clash between the two cartels took place.
Seeing this situation, residents who still resisted leaving their homes left them.
As they left they saw in the area bordering the village of Nuevo Morelia the bodies of people, mostly young people killed during the clashes, but also two of the population, whom they could not collect. The displaced residents are now sheltered in other municipalities. “Almost the majority, well, they ran away (they left the communities).
There are a few families who are holding on there, risking their lives for not abandoning their little house, their little animals that they have there; they are resisting because they say: ‘we do not owe, we are not with anyone'”. However, for the Chiapas prosecutor’s office, in Chicomuselo “there are no reports of homicide due to some type of confrontation”.
The agency assured, through a press release, that, “thanks to the coordination with the authorities of the three levels of government, tranquility prevails and the security of the inhabitants of the municipality of Chicomuselo is guaranteed”. He also asked the citizens to trust the statements of the agencies in charge of security and justice, “in order to avoid falling into misleading publications”, and assured that “there are no reports of homicide due to some type of confrontation”.
Source: El Financiero
