translated from Spanish: An entire community flees violence in Chiapas

the past November 7 held a community meeting in the town of Chavajeval, of the municipality of El Bosque, Chiapas. A detonation was heard then several gunshots. The memory of an ambush that occurred two weeks ago, in which two men were killed, caused the audience to flee seeking refuge, but not in their homes but outside the community: the entire population came out of there, leaving the site as a people Ghost.
Approximately a thousand 800 people spent the night moving toward the mountain, looking for trails to the municipal seat of El Bosque, where it might be safe. The rumor of the exodus and the violence that caused it reached Manuel Pérez priests and Helder López, who came to Chavajeval and encountered a semi-desert town, where he still was a body in an advanced state of decomposition, without some parts that it had already been devoured by animals.
According to Lopez Velasco, passing found also some families that remained hidden in the village and had not gone in three days for fear of another armed attack. A person said to have spent four days without eating. At another point they found a 110-year-old woman who was lost after the departure of the entire community. The clerics took them to the municipal seat to provide them with medical care and shelter. This forced displacement is in addition to others that are taking place in Chiapas, as peasants armed attacks product can not repel.
“Until now there is no clarity, they say that they are already investigating, but still there is nothing. The community was investigating the deaths of these two people and shot were by several parties. That’s where the community was dispersed and went for fear. “Don’t know who shoot them, why leave out of fear”, said father Helder López Animal politician by telephone.
The Fray Bartolome de las Casas human rights Center estimates that they are mil 764 the indigenous Tzotzil people who fled the town, although the father calculates more than two thousand. Almost none speak Spanish, according to the pastor, and they had never before had an exodus of this magnitude, in which all the people fled once. For this reason, the Fray considered Chavajeval village lives a humanitarian crisis urgently, because these people need a safe place in which to take shelter, food, medical care and medicines.
Reads: Villagers displaced in Chiapas live with the fear of being killed or arrested the crisis has also temporarily fragmented families, as scattered movements towards communities of the municipalities of fallow, Simojovel and San Cristóbal de Houses caused the separation of families who are looking for each other, warns the Fray.En urgent action posted Tuesday, the Organization says that on Monday went to the area to learn about the situation and found that in the mountains continue about 500 displaced persons, “without shelter, shelter, or drugs, are mostly women with their daughters and sons”, concerns the release. Of those women, adds, four were pregnant at the time of escape and one already took birth in the mountain. There are also two children alone and two people in 80 years.
On the other hand, the people of Chavajeval has no human activity for days, according to the Fray. “Houses are abandoned without damage, in pens some animals have died but there is no looting,” respect the text.
This massive displacement occurs at the same time others reported in recent months in the Highlands of Chiapas, predominantly indigenous and source tzotzil area. The most recent is that of the municipality of Aldama, where about 780 people have come out for fear of being gunned down by paramilitaries that a coffee-producing territory disputed them and shoot them just come out to harvest their coffee.
Both the priest and the Center Fray have urged the State Government to intervene to stop the armed paramilitary attacks, self-defence groups and organized crime against indigenous peoples, to not be able to defend themselves abandoned their villages, and all they had in them.
According to the Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos, 29 episodes of massive internal displacement in Mexico, 20 of which were caused by the violence were recorded in 2016. Most occur in 12 States of the country: Chiapas, Chihuahua, Durango, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, Veracruz and Zacatecas.
 
 

Original source in Spanish