translated from Spanish: The town where children train to fight criminals

Children in school uniforms run around the Community Police command of the community of Rincón de Chautla, an hour from Chilapa. The children play the fight and shoot theself with wooden pistols that they made to train them.
Community policemen come to the court for multipurpose use and so do the women of this small community and three other neighbors: Zacapexco, Alcozacan and Ayehualtempa. Their canary yellow, Mexican pink, orange and lemon green suits brighten up this morning cloudy and cold. As women parade on the multipurpose court carrying their rifles, the children play.
Rincón de Chautla, together with 16 other Nahua communities belonging to the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities-Founding Peoples (CRAC-PF) have lived in the midst of a struggle for 13 years. In this last stage, from December 2018 to date, according to journalistic counts, 20 people were killed and 12 enforced disappearances. They explain that crime is intended to empty the area.
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It’s Monday, June 10, 2019. Nearly a month has passed since the video that was vetoed on the Internet in which five boys and three girls, aged between seven and nine, march as military and after the position of firm one of them reads a statement.
“As a people we will not leave you alone. It’s our word against that of the hitmen. We get killed by a community and we go for 10 hitmen… The children who are survivors of the bloody attacks today are still in the fight, because we know that they will return and attack our police, ” said a boy of about eight years in front of the cameras in the video shared by the same Community Police.
And it’s almost six months since the arrival of men armed with rifles erupting into the community. That day, according to official reports, there were 12 dead. Everybody from outside. The people of Rincón de Chautla claim that they defended themselves against a new aggression from a criminal organization.
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In this Nahua community, it is the children and women who bear the indelible traces of the murders, disappearances and imprisonments of their parents, brothers, uncles, cousins and friends. Since 2006, children and women have played an active role in defending their people, nestled in Chilapa, one of the townst with the deadest and missing after Chilpancingo and Acapulco.
What is going on in the Nahua community of Rincón de Chautla that its women and children have had to train to kill?
Children don’t train today. Maybe they won’t do it anymore. Community policeman Policarpo Rodríguez, 59, has a rugged Spaniard, who are on the pageof about children’s training. After the May 12 video and the media attention received, the only teacher in the community – because the two more teachers are not at risk – was the one who asked them to leave the children out.
“It was kind of desperate, because we’re desperate,” Rodriguez admits.
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Chautla’s corner is on a hill. From the viewpoint of the cruise that leads to both Chilapa and José Joaquín de Herrera (Hueycatenango), you can see leafy trees that accompany the three-kilometre rugged path. Pines and weeds of the countryside. Downhill, you see the reddish earth as the color of the bricks of the houses. While everyone is on the court, four women sunbathe corn on top of two palm petates.
It is the 14th after the events of May 27. The women in palm kittens say that food is scarce. The geographical point of your community forces you to go to Chilapa or Hueycatenango for food. They say that’s their misfortune. On each side operate different groups of organized crime that prevent them from bringing food.
Children play while the greats talk about what’s happened in the village. They play and walk around the testimonies of what it was like since 2006, Rincón Chautla, a shelter but also a place where they have counted murders. Here are people from Paraíso Tepila, a neighboring community whose families have moved since December 19, when armed men broke in and 12 members disappeared.
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Policarpo Rodríguez, one of the displaced community policemen of Paraíso Tepila, does not get used to missing his 12 relatives: there has been no trace of them since December 19, 2018. This June 10th looks distressed carrying his rifle.
The man, who does not dislike being taken photos, says that armed civilians of the Movement for Peace and Justice – whom he identifies with the group “Los Ardillos” – settled last December on the Chilapa-Hueycatenango road, and on the Paradise cruise Tepila abducted her 12 relatives, everyone ran away, three were children.
One event after another. That’s why it was the ladies who raised their hands to be trained and agreed to get their children to receive that martial education. For them there are only two options: they defend themselves or leave.
Read the full report on the Poppy Journalism site.
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Original source in Spanish