The false battle of Puebla

 

The false battle of Puebla

Hermann Bellinghausen

It is not a calm déjà vu. It is 2013 and not 1997. What is happening in the ejido (previously colonia) Puebla, within the borders of Chenalhó in Chiapas, which they have distorted and tried to present as a religious conflict of some kind, is actually an explosive manifestation of a latent resentment in the families of the paramilitaries which suddenly stokes a contagious and malicious rumour: “They have poisoned our water!”  Who? “The Catholics, Las Abejas, the followers of liberation theology”; Who did the first crowd gather against? The Zapatista support bases. They grab three, tie them up, torture them and hand them over to the police. A few weeks ago; now a hundred indigenous, mainly women and children who are not even Zapatistas, walk the painful stations of a non-metaphorical exodus, faced with the unflinching and declarative gaze of the state government which pretends the “conflict” is being “settled” at a negotiating table where the parties are reconciled.

We are in the wake of the Acteal massacre. “We did not come here because we wanted to, but because they are persecuting us. They want to kill us, they are organized for that, and the government does nothing”, says Rosa Sánchez Arias this Saturday, close to tears, but courageous, a mother of a family who does not speak Spanish and arrives fleeing. “We did not poison the water. I declare to you that we have done nothing”, she says in a tiny press conference before leaving Nueva Primavera School in San Cristóbal de las Casas, where the displaced spent the night and washed, to travel to the parish school at Yabteclum (the “old town” of Chenalhó), where they arrived that night with the intention of moving to Acteal on Monday. “One place, and another, and another”, Rosa summarizes and laments. On the night of the 22nd the persecuted families decided, and sneaked out early. They went down to the huts of Tenejapa, were covered in mud, scattered, became ill and suffered before being spotted by the civil brigades who were looking for them.

That same August 20th a hundred young people and children, with permission to bully, prevented the first people displaced from Puebla from coming closer, in the community itself many more were gathering stones and surrounded the Catholics who were waiting for the returnees. “They threw away the food we prepared, stole the pots and burned everything. They grabbed a girl and were about to beat her. They said dreadful things while they threw everything away. They burned the house”, added Rosa. Dozens of people, imprisoned and besieged in a hut, “felt the smoke and heat of the fire”. The children were terrified, those on the outside were laughing until they cried.

Juan, another of the displaced: “Some pastors (evangelicals) are with the aggressor groups. They have spread the word that when we return they will finish us off. If they claim to have the word of God, then why do they do this and want to force us to forgive it all. They do not want justice. They talk of ‘reconciliation’, and the government with them. They forget that they have responsibilities.” They tortured, burned, defiled the priest, and threatened him with death. “And the government says they are just lacking our response to their proposals for the return, without seeing that the criminals are on their side and waiting for us”.

From Puebla and los Chorros, the paramilitary game was organized which devastated Chenalhó in 1997, and reached its climax in the camp for displaced people in Acteal on that December 22nd. The dust from the recent release of the convicted paramilitaries (not those from Puebla certainly, for none of them set foot in prison other than the then Mayor Jacinto Arias Cruz) has returned to stir the mud. With a naivety not seen since the government of Julio César Ruiz Ferro prior to the massacre, the government of Manuel Velasco Coello “hoped” that the Catholics would accept an “agreement” that does not guarantee justice or protection, and it has already been shown that the police cannot be or are not with the others.

The subject of the rumour is key. According to a neighbour from Yaxjemel, not far from Puebla, weeks ago, “the aggressor group of Agustín Cruz did not have enough support in their crusade against the ‘Catholics’ (although some were not), until the water poisoning”. Never mind that the regional Health delegate, the poet Odysseus Córdova, denied the existence of a case of water poisoning throughout the area, in the very place the concept itself turns and operates. It gives a reason for revenge. Like the Twin Towers.

But let no one be surprised. With overwhelming dignity and beauty, the displaced people arrive at night at the refuge of Yabteclum between copal and murmurings like those of Rulfo. The locals who welcome them hear their testimony.  Waves of prayers in a Tzotzil lullaby. Then they offer them beans, from a huge griddle full of women’s hands come endless tortillas, and children who have wept for two nights in terror now laugh and eat and run around. Tomorrow they will continue their journey. The nightmares of bad justice beget monsters.

 

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2013/08/26/cultura/a11a1cul

 

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