Siltepec Residents Take Control of the Chiapas Municipality’s Territory

 ** They close access to beer and alcohol distributers, and to Canadian mining and logging companies

 ** They close 18 cantinas and question behavior of the mayor, the police and the Public Ministry

 

By: Hermann Bellinghausen,

 

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, January 13, 2012

 

Organized residents of Siltepec Municipality, in the Sierra Madre of Chiapas, closed off access to the municipality to beer companies and distributers of alcohol and drugs, as well as Canadian mining and logging companies that exploit their territory. They also closed 18 cantinas (bars) and seriously questioned the police, the mayor and the state’s agent from the Public Ministry (MP, its initials in Spanish), who protect the criminals. Starting this Thursday they decided to organize “as a municipal headquarters [country seat], in coordination with the ejidos, rancherías,barrios and colonias, to exercise control of our territory without the intervention of the political parties and the government.”

 

The civil society organization Luz y Fuerza del Pueblo-Región Sierra (People’s Light & Power-Sierra Region), adherent to the Other Campaign, with a presence in 38 of the region’s municipalities, maintained when reporting the action: “Our municipality, just like the majority in Chiapas, suffers grave problems of alcoholism, an excess of cantinas, a proliferation of drugs and prostitution, cutting down trees and commercialization of the environment, the clandestine looting of minerals by corporations from Canada in the Hondurasejido and the Las Nubes barrio of the Toquián Grande ejido, and the attempt to intervene  in others.”

 

Residents placed chains and signs on the entrances and exits of the municipal headquarters and in the ejidos where there are natural and mineral resources, “to avoid clandestine looting, since the Black Fire mining company has been coming in at night and has already covertly taken eight trucks of a mineral from the Campo Aéreo barrio(neighborhood) of the Honduras ejido. We warn that we are no longer going to permit this anywhere in the Sierra.”

 

Protecting themselves in Article 39 of the Constitution, they add: “By orders of the organized people, ejidos and communities we have cancelled more than 18 cantinas in Siltepec municipal headquarters and at the same time we have our guards and vigilance in the centre [of town] and the five barrios, in the ejidos and rancherías where our organization is incorporated, so that we maintain order at night. We detain drunks, criminals and polleros (migrant traffickers) since the sector police do not watch or offer security, but are rather dedicated to extorting and repressing the population, while the municipal president does not fulfill his obligations.”

 

They demand that the new community guards be respected “because they act by order of the people and under agreed-upon acts.” And they point out: “Our decision to organize independently from the government and the political parties was because there have already been many years of deceit and lying. There were 72 years of PRI government, already there have been almost 12 by the PAN, and almost 12 of the PRD in Chiapas, and the situation of our people doesn’t change, it continues getting worse, despite the campaigns on radio and television about the expenditure the government says it has made.”

 

The Sierra of Chiapas, “which has always remained asleep, has now started to wake up together with other compañeros and brothers from the municipalities of Motozintla, El Porvenir, Bella Vista, La Grandeza and Frontera Comalapa, among others,” they point out.

 

In their argument they add their disagreement over high electric energy rates, “domination, the lack of justice and corruption by the MP, Alexander Pérez Ramírez,” deficient medical services “and the lack of humanity from the health personnel,” because “the famous Seguro Popular(Popular Insurance) is prohibited faced with the gravity of the problems; the corruption and abandonment in which the municipality and its ejidos are found. Letters and denunciations before the state authorities have been many and we have not had favorable answers.”

 

Siltepec residents, inside the steep Sierra Madre, near the border with Guatemala, also warn the Coca Cola company: “We will not permit you to take possession of Rosarito Mountain and the Predio Las Chicharras of the Vega del Rosario ejido, where there is molybdenum and sweet water.”

 

They denounce death threats by criminal gangs that operate in the region. Last December 31, their compañero Salomón Ventura Morales was shot dead, in his home in the barrio of Las Cruces, “by clearly identifiable people ” Enough already (ya basta), they conclude, “of corruption, injustices and secret deals between criminals and authorities.”

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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada

Saturday, January 14, 2012

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2012/01/14/politica/014n1pol

 

original translation by the Chiapas Support Committee