Questions Remain After Another Mexican Activist is Murdered in Chiapas
Early this month, Mexican activist Simón Pedro Pérez López was murdered in front of his son just days after speaking out against violence in the southern state of Chiapas and calling on the government for an investigation. Pérez López was a Tzotzil Mayan priest living in the Los Altos region of Chiapas with his wife and six children. For all his life, he'd been aware of the same social problems that had plagued the region since the Spaniards tightened their colonial grip in the 18th Century: poverty, state-sanctioned violence, culture collapse, and land theft. Despite the egalitarian promises of the Mexican Revolution, these problems persisted through the 20th Century and even increased in the latter part of the century when the country opened itself to foreign interests.
Simón witnessed these injustices first-hand in 1992 when he was only seven years old. During that year, a man was shot while protesting land theft and environmental destruction in the community of Acteal, Chiapas. When the wounded man's friends took him to the hospital, Mexican police arrested them rather than pursuing the actual culprits. The event created a scandal in Chiapas, but it was no surprise to the locals who were no strangers to state-sponsored repression. In response to this and similar events, local organizers established the Sociedad Civil Las Abejas (the "Bees"), a Catholic-Tzotzil group protesting structural violence in an area long soaked in indigenous blood. In addition to protesting the recurrent violence in the region, Las Abejas also sought economic justice through the formation of artisan collectives and partnerships with international NGO's to market their products and raise funds for the community.
Las Abejas, along with affiliated groups like the Zapatistas, not only brought light to injustices like land left and government repression but also rejected the government's new globalist policies by promoting economic and agricultural self sufficiency. These increasingly visible movements were inconvenient and embarrassing for the Mexican government, which had historically sought to project to the outside world an image of modern prosperity while ignoring the poverty and violence suffered by much of the population. After the Zapatista army announced itself to the world on January 1, 1994 by seizing several towns in Chiapas, the military came down with a vengeance. Even after the Zapatista uprising subsided and the group tried to negotiate a truce through the San Andres Peace Accords, the government continued to sponsor paramilitary groups to harass and murder people throughout the Chiapas countryside. These efforts culminated in a brutal massacre in 1997 when an armed group opened fire on a church filled with Abejas who were praying for peace, all while an army unit at a nearby checkpoint looked the other way and refused to assist the victims. Among the murdered and tortured were several women and children.
Simón was 12 when the Acteal Massacre occurred. The massacre undoubtedly had an impact on the young boy who had grown up around the Abejas. His family members were founders, and in the following years his involvement would grow and he would eventually serve as president of the organization.
The conflict Simon was born into is a very old one, but he spent his life trying to sort it out. Just in his area of Chiapas, there are the local Tzotzil people, the government, the developers, the drug-trafficking organizations, and other groups of Maya people with varying levels of cooperation and competition. Like across Mexico, these sides are sometimes poorly defined. Some confrontations turn violent quickly; others are about different kinds of power. Despite these difficulties, Simon did what he could to protect his community by publicly denouncing crime and violence, and he tried to ignore the anonymous threats and the unwillingness of the government to take those threats seriously.
Even after his time as president of the Abejas around 2020, he continued this work. On Thursday, July 1, he publicly denounced specific examples of violence and called for investigations by the state. Days later, on Monday, July 5, he was murdered in front of his son at the age of 35. A member of his parish said that he had likely been killed by los Sicarios de Pantelhó, and a representative of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, Guillermo Fernández-Maldonado, called for a thorough investigation that looks at links to "his work as a defender of human rights and multiculturalism." According to Fernández-Maldonado, state authorities "not only failed to provide proper protection, but put at risk all defenders of human rights and indigenous communities that dare to raise their voice against insecurity."
According to the Mexican National Human Rights Commission, Simon was one of over 10 Mexican activists who have been assassinated this year. His murder came just days after the murder of Yaqui water rights activist Tomás Rojo Valencia, also allegedly by members of organized criminal groups. In that case, after a short investigation, the government declared that Rojo Valencia was killed over informal tolls the cartels were charging outside of town. Neither of the men arrested for his death have commented on their motivation.
At least 47 civil rights activists have been murdered since the beginning of the administration of current Mexican president Andres Manuel López Obrador (“AMLO”), who ran on a campaign of anti-corruption and populism. Forty-seven deaths over two years is fewer than the past average of 37 a year. However, it remains to be seen if the dip is a sign of real change. Unfortunately, despite AMLO’s prior populist rhetoric in favor of marginalized indigenous groups, he has been deafeningly silent about events like Simon’s assassinated. In addition, the mayor of Pantelhó, where the gang that allegedly killed Simón is based, is of the same political party as the president (Morena)—and she has recently been accused of financing organized crime. It's a bad look for a party whose members claim to be breaking from the past, and it may be a sign of more scandals to come.
Despite the steep uphill battle for justice for people like Simón, all we can do is continue to publicize these events and continue to pressure authorities to enact true change and stand up to the criminal groups and unscrupulous land grabbers who fuel the violence. TejaNext Media will do its small part to keep Simón’s name alive, so stay tuned for future updates and subscribe to our newsletter below.
To learn more about las Abejas, including their wonderful eulogy for Simon, you can visit their website: http://acteal.blogspot.com/.