Ch’oles y Tesltales Arrest Criminals, “Making Use of Usos y Costumbres”
Ejido San Sebastian Bachajón Adherents of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle, Chiapas, Mexico
To the EZLN
To the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle
To the free media
To the defenders of human rights
To the national and international civil society
Compañeros and compañeras, we want to inform you of the situation we are living through in our territory, as this is a clear example of how we have been affected by similar situations in the past.
Sunday night, June 12, in on the highway in the municipality of Tumbalá, in the northern zone of Chiapas, a group of around 10 people assaulted and assassinated a young campesino of 22 years of age named Medardo Astudillo Arcos, of the community of Cuctiepa.
The Ch’ole and Tseltale communities of the region, who know that there would be no justice given by the state, knowing the complicity of the police forces with the bad government and criminality, decided to organize ourselves autonomously and mobilize around 800 men to track and capture the criminal gang. Thanks to the witnesses that were in the area, they were identified as Miguel Pérez Cruz, Antonio Pérez Crus, Medardo Pérez Cruz, among others, and there were confessions that the group organizer was Mariano Silvano Gómez.
Fifteen communities of different municipalities carried out the operation; among them was the municipality of Bachajón, adherent of the sixth declaration of the Lacandona jungle. We saw the need to unite against organize crime, to prevent the bad government from utilizing these types of situations, with the help of the mass media, to present the idea to civil society that this was a result of insecurity and division between the indigenous people, advocating the intervention of the police and militaries in the territories that have become the focus of governmental interests.
Moreover, we denounce that because of those interests, the bad government in complicity with police forces in the region, have utilized similar conflicts to indict members of the indigenous organization of Bachajón, unjustly detaining them, as is the case of Emilio Jiménez Gómez and Esteben Gómez Jiménez.
The organized intervention of the Ch’ole and Tseltale communities to detain the criminals, making use of our usos and costumbres and the modes of community police, is an example of autonomous justice that does not only resolve the necessities of security in the region, but also of tourism, that daily transits these highways destined for places like Agua Azul, Palenque or the peninsula of Yucatan.
Compañeros and Compañeras we will keep you informed of the situation.
Never more a Mexico without us.
Land and Liberty!
Zapata Lives!
Until the Victory Always!
Freedom to the Political Prisoners!
Juan Vázquez Guzmán Lives, the Struggle of Bachajón Continues!
Juan Carlos Gómez Silvano Lives, the Struggle of Bachajón Continues!
No to the Dispossession of Indigenous Territories!
Out With the States Police in Our Indigenous Territory!
Immediate Presentation of the Disappeared and Asasianted Compañeros of the Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos of Ayotzinapa!
Love Live the Dignified Struggle of the Chole Compañeros and Compañeras of the Ejido Tila!
Long Live the Dignified Struggle of the Compañeros and Compañeras of San Francisco Xochicuautla!
Long Live the People that Struggle for their Autonomy and Freedom!
Justice for Ayotzinapa, Acteal, ABC, Atenco!
Ejido San Sebastian Bachajon, Adherents of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle
Poorly translated from the original here: http://www.pozol.org/?p=12622
Palabras Rebeldes- Rebellious Words 