Mexico City.- The day of first attack in White Land, Copala, Oaxaca, Andrés went with his three children to buy food, the peasant’s house was the first in the town. The paramilitaries it they killed quickly and injured minors. In three days they managed to displace the Triqui community by raping, killing and dismembering their victims.
“The president doesn’t care, he wants us to die…” The Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City, she has been sharing her space with Oaxacan weavers and their families for just over a year. no justice and they feel forgotten, life in the big city passes them by.
Paramilitaries attacked the community without warning on December 26, 2020 for the first time. The deaths did not stop until January 17, 2021. Since that date, 60 Triqui families, including the widow of Andres Martinez LopezThey ask for justice and feel forgotten by the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO).
On Juarez street in the first square of the country’s capital, they show the photos of their victims. There is also a kitchen with gas and made of canvas, where they have dishes and make purslane and chilacayote water. “Everything is bought here, the land gives it to me,” says Lesli, who misses blue corn.
Andrew. Maria Petra Lopez. Marcelino Ramirez Y Tomas Martinez Flores . They are those killed by armed civilians. Feliciana López is the one who remembers the events that began at half past eight in the morning of December in the Mixtec mountains of Oaxaca.
After killing Andrés and injuring his two sons, the civilians wearing balaclavas, long weapons and tactical equipment, wounded the elderly uncles of the man whose body was still outside his house. It was there that they began to flee, some went deep into the bush and the majority towards the community of yosoyuxi.
The violence against Tierra Blanca continued for two more days. On December 28, 2020, they have a record of the last displaced person. They all left in three days, María Petra could not run away from her house. When Feliciana returned to town, she found her dead body.
“She remained in the hands of those paramilitaries and we found her dead.” Feliciana identifies as paramilitaries members of the Unification Movement and Triki Struggle (MULT), a group created in 1970 and which, together with the Movement for Unification and Independent Triki Struggle (MULTI), has the Mixtec mountains of Oaxaca in constant acts of violence.
Feliciana and the 56 people managed to return to Tierra Blanca on January 6, 2021. They searched Maria Petra’s house, she was walking, but she was slow. Her diabetes did not allow her to flee, she was barely regaining mobility when the attacks occurred. María was raped and beaten by paramilitaries. She had been dead for several days.
Before the second attack, the return of the families to Tierra Blanca was agreed with the promise that the armed forces of the federal government would stay until there was peace. It was January 11 and they only lasted three days. By the 14th of last year, the residents were left alone again.
the night of January 17 began the second attack. It was night and the bullets made at least one woman flee to the mountains, others were unable to leave where they were, but most of the 56 people stayed in a house where they were surrounded.
“We were kidnapped because the house was there and the paramilitaries were a few meters away, we were 56 people without food, without water, without access to anything for five days. They wanted to kill us with hunger, bullets and everything. They didn’t want to see us alive”.
Pedro Velasco González was one of those who did not reach the hut and after the attempt, he was injured. During the days of the attack he was not allowed to receive medical assistance and he stayed in his house until the afternoon of January 21, when a man identified as Nicolás Perla Romero, municipal president of Santiago Juxtlahuacaarrived to give the paramilitaries news: the federal and state governments would arrive soon and they had to free Feliciana and all of Tierra Blanca.
The woman was terrified when she saw a drone fly over near where they were sheltering, but now she believes that it is how the government realized that it was true, that her four-day suffering was real. As the drone left, 20 armed men approached to chase them away.
“We waited for death, we did not think we would get out alive, but God is very great and he let us get out alive,” says the woman who believed that her end had come when they began to shout at her to get out.
-Go away, it’s not convenient for us to be locked up, because the governor (from Oaxaca, Alejandro Ismael Murat Hinojosa) is going to come. People from Oaxaca are going to come and it is not convenient for us to be here- One of the paramilitaries with his balaclava and tactical equipment told them. The inhabitants left Tierra Blanca again, never to return again until now. They took a truck and a car and survived their kidnapping.
Feliciana returned only after the authorities arrived, but they did not believe her. Everything was calm in the Mixtec mountains, there was no trace of violence. Her companions began the search for her missing relatives. They found one of them in the bush, she had survived there the days of the attack.
Marcelino and Tomás, uncles of the triki woman, did not have the same fate. Their bodies were found several days decomposed. Those responsible for their murder also dismembered them. His photos are now part of the evidence of canvases that, hung in front of the Palace of Fine Arts, inside, the mural “Victims of War” by David Alfaro Siqueiros It also shows mutilated bodies, since violence in Mexico is not new, although it continues to impress. It was when locating the bodies that the government believed the stories that they lived in Tierra Blanca.
For the second attack, a contingent was already on Juarez Avenue in Mexico City. Their relatives from the community in the United States suggested they start a sit-in that is now over a year old.
“I feel like a dog without an owner, without a home.” The women who do not receive help from the government and consider that they give the president of Mexico, AMLO, a version that is alien to the truth. They support themselves by sending remittances from their families and by people who support them by buying their fabrics or donations. Neither the capital nor the federal government gives them the support they seek, which is to return to their land or access to health services in CDMX.
In July they tried to return, after seven months of negotiations, but when they arrived they found a group of women led by Emelia Ortiz Garciaalternate deputy for Morena in Oaxaca, a political current of the federal government, for which the Triqui inhabitants believe that the misinformation comes from their own allies.
Read more: Police woman in Oaxaca has been unable to walk for eight months
They will continue to sit until they can return safely. They withstand cold, hail and the hot sun of the capital. They put up with the disinterest of the government and the desire to see their land again and the fruits of those who lived. They do not know why they were attacked, why they are not allowed to return, but they do not lose faith that they will return to Tierra Blanca Copala, in the Mixtec mountains of Oaxaca.
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