Communiqué from the Popular Indigenous Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ) on the recent murder of its members Bartolo Hilario Morales and Isaías Xanteco Ahuejote.

Twenty days after the cowardly murder of our brothers Lucio Bartolo Faustino and Modesto Verales Sebastián, a crime that remains in complete impunity on the part of the three levels of government. With the pain and rage that invade the hearts of the Nahua peoples of the low mountains of the state of Guerrero, we make public the artful murder of our brothers Bartolo Hilario Morales and Isaías Xanteco Ahuejote. Both were indigenous Nahua and local promoters of the Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero–Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ). Those who consummated this atrocious murder are professionals of para-militarism and extrajudicial murder who are agreeable to taking lives. They denigrated and enraged them, dismembered and bagged the compañeros’ bodies, and with this vile act they thought that they could also denigrate their history, and denigrate their life. They were wrong.

Not only were they wrong, but also the dignity of their lives contrasts more and more with the cowardice of their murders. The peoples of the CIPOG-EZ and the CNI of Guerrero, Mexico have guarded the memory if the men and women who have given their lives in the struggle for the reconstitution of collective rights. So, we ask the dignified peoples of Mexico and the world to protect and grow the names, the history and the struggle of our brothers murdered for defending life; Bartolo Hilario Morales and Isaías Xanteco Ahuejote. Lucio Bartolo Faustino and Modesto Verales Sebastián.

The responsibility of los three levels of government, the federal government in charge of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the State government of Héctor Astudillo Flores and the municipal government of Jesús Parra García, is complete. Each level of government has done nothing more than give continuity to impunity, passing the ball to one another, by saying that the problems are inherited from past governments, that is the PRI attitude that has submerged us in the blood bath that our country has become and doesn’t see any transformation that wants to change things. It seems that important changes only occur in the spheres above, below our lives continue without mattering to the powerful.

Different narco-paramilitary groups have operated in complicity with the Mexican State for more than 25 years in the Chilapa region and today is no exception. The state regime has attempted the disarticulation of our peoples again and again, and we have resisted the war of extermination for more than 500 years. Our crime has been defending our territory from the extraction of what they call natural resources and for us are sacred hills or springs of water and life. We fight to maintain the principle that our grandparents left us, called by us uses and customs, a world very different from the one the Mexican State has constituted and that doesn’t match our way of community government.

Our peoples are suffering a systemic violence in which they disappear or murder our women, children and men, and it would seem like nothing is happening. Everything remains in complete impunity because of this bad government, in which one of the state’s strategies is generating terror in the heart of our people. Using torture, psychological warfare, death threats and persecution against all the members that serve as promoters of community development.

As indigenous people we ask ourselves again and again: Why is there so much dehumanization? Why is human life no longer worth more? Why are some lives worth less than others? And it rather seems that they see those below as merchandise. We ask ourselves again and again: How would they, the powerful, the governments with more than 30 million votes, react if this violence happened to one of their relatives? Or perhaps disappearance, torture and vile murder are only reserved for us?

As a national indigenous movement we fight to reconstitute the social fabric of our peoples, we fight to re-establish our communities in peace, and we seek the recognition and reconstitution as indigenous peoples of our languages, our culture and the thinking of our peoples that is interwoven with Mother Earth.

On May 23, 2019 around 1:30 pm, our brothers Bartolo Hilario Morales and Isaías Xanteco Ahuejote disappeared near Chilapa de Álvarez. On May 24 in the morning we knew the terrible news, their dead bodies were found. Today we denounce it publicly and we ask the honest and dignified compañeros and compañeras of Mexico and the world: no matter how much they wanted to destroy their bodies, let’s embrace today their history of struggle, which is the history of struggle of the indigenous peoples of Mexico and the world.

We demand justice for our murdered brothers: Bartolo Hilario Morales and Isaías Xanteco Ahuejote, Lucio Bartolo Faustino and Modesto Verales Sebastián. That the pain that today besets the family members, friends and compañer@s of struggle, does not remain unpunished, or in oblivion!

FRATERNALLY:

Justice for Bartolo Hilario Morales and Isaías Xanteco Ahuejote, members of the CNI!
Justice for Lucio Bartolo Faustino and Modesto Verales Sebastián del CIPOG-EZ, ex member of the CIG and the CNI!
Justice for Gustavo Cruz Mendoza, murdered indigenous communicator of the CIPO-RFM!
Justicia para Samir Flores Soberanes, murdered indigenous communicator!
Stop the counterinsurgency war against the EZLN!
Freedom for Fidencio Aldama of the Yaqui tribe!
Never more a Mexico without us!
Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero – Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ)
Regions: Costa Chica, Coastal Mountains, High Mountains and Low Mountains of Guerrero
Congreso Nacional Indígena, Saturday, May 25, 2019 ■

Originally published by Congreso Nacional Indígena. Translated by Chiapas Support.
Image above: Members of the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities – Peoples Founders (CRAC-PF) in a November 2018 assembly, in Rincón de Chautla, municipality of Chilapa de Álvarez, Guerrero.