Violence is intensifying in the northern area of Chiapas, in the Tulijá valley region, neighboring Tabasco. Armed men dressed in camouflage attacked and burned houses in the municipal seat of Tila this Tuesday and Wednesday, causing fear in the population. In videos taken from the homes, some of them can be seen pointing at houses, shooting, breaking into them, breaking windows… An affected neighbor, who speaks on condition of anonymity, says that the attackers burned his house this Wednesday. “We survived by a miracle,” he says.
The shootings have been happening in the capital of Tila since Tuesday night. “The detonations began around 8:00 p.m., bursts could be heard in several points of the capital, both on the outskirts and in parts of the center. Screams could also be heard, although we did not know who they were. On Facebook they began to say that there were armed people in the center. Then they started burning houses,” says the neighbor. With 83,000 inhabitants, Tila is one of the most important municipalities in the region. 98% of these inhabitants live in poverty, according to Coneval.
The conflict in Tila, with a Ch’ol Mayan majority, reflects that of other municipalities in nearby regions, such as Chenalhó, Simojovel or Pantelhó… In this last municipality no elections were held, due to the cutting of the road that connects it with San Cristóbal of the houses. Days before, four men had been murdered in the town. And a few weeks before, in April, clashes between the self-defense group El Machete and a criminal organization forced the Army to rescue the teachers, trapped by the schools due to the shootings.
In any case, the violence in the Los Altos region and the northern area in general is no exception. The entire border area with Guatemala, from Frontera Corozal to Tapachula, and the foothills of the Mariscal mountain range, are in check by the struggles of criminal groups, linked in one way or another to the two major criminal franchises in the country, the Sinaloa Cartel. and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). In Chicomuselo, near the border, gateway to the mountains, the elections were not held either due to the violence of recent weeks.
In the case of Tila, the complexity is maximum. At this point, it is difficult to identify the group to which the attackers belong, much less indicate their affiliation. A long battle for 130 hectares of land is at the origin of a conflict that lasts decades, but has intensified since the second half of last year, with clashes like those of these days and murders of community leaders, in the case of Carmen López, member of the National Indigenous Council, in January.
The fight for land acts as a common thread. On the one hand, there is the Tila ejido, communal territory, part of the municipality, with 5,405 hectares. And on the same side, also, the ejidatarios, their children, grandchildren… In the ejido there are also neighbors living, a population without the right to land, but who has put down roots there. On the other side are the municipal authorities and the power they hold, intermediaries for years of the Government’s social programs, first with the PRI and then with the Green Party.
The municipal authorities have also gone hand in hand with the economic powers of the region, mainly the builders and transporters, as explained by the academic Emilio Pérez, in two works published on the conflict in the municipality between 2018 and 2022. The clash between both parties, he says, arises from the occupation of the municipal authorities of 130 hectares of the ejido. Initially, the Government was going to compensate the ejido for this occupation and the community authorities agreed. But then everything changed.
The ejido authorities discovered that the lawyer who represented their interests deceived them regarding the amount of the payment that the Government was going to deliver, a situation that provoked a radical reaction: the ejido, encouraged and morally rearming after the emergence of the EZLN, no longer wanted the money. , he wanted his land back. The battle experienced a moment of great tension at the end of 2015, when the ejidatarios expelled the municipal authorities from the ejido. Since then, everything has been violence in the area, from the municipal authorities to the ejidatarios and between the splits of ejidatario groups, pressured from outside by big capital.
As Pérez explains: “From being an agrarian conflict it escalated to a more complex process, where the project of autonomy and self-government converges (…) Given the lack of attention from State institutions to address the problem, the tension escalates to degree of constant confrontations between the ‘autonomous ejidatarios’ and the so-called ‘settlers’, sympathizers of the Green Party and the leadership of the ejido, which has official recognition before the National Agrarian Registry.”
In the last few hours, local media in Chiapas have specifically blamed the group of self-employed workers for the attacks perpetrated in the municipal seat, which is also the population center of the ejido. The reason for this latest wave of attacks is not well known, whether it is in some way related to last Sunday’s elections or whether it points more to local dynamics. Meanwhile, this Wednesday night, the attacks continued.
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