Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has brought to the level of a discursive war the latest signs of the crisis sweeping through Chiapas in the Mexican southeast, the gateway to Central America and the cradle of the Zapatista movement. The President has recognized that there is indeed a battle between organized crime groups in this State; He didn’t mention them by name, but all signs point to a dispute between the Sinaloa cartels and the Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), the most powerful and bloodthirsty in Mexico. However, López Obrador has assured that the propaganda surrounding the criminal war is greater than the actual dominance of drug traffickers; that the speakers of the right are magnifying the issue. “We will respond to what has been widely disseminated by the right, the conservative bloc, which is a phenomenon because it is about how news spreads and above all it is reproduced by those who are against the transformation, the Conservatives,” said López Obrador in his conference this Monday.
This weekend, an image shocked the press: a car caravan of heavily armed men drove in a line along a street, surrounded by residents who applauded and thanked them. The men apparently came from the Sinaloa cartel and came to Frontera Comalapa, as the drug traffickers often say, to free the people from the yoke of the Contras, the CJNG. The most disturbing thing about the video was less the show of armed violence and more the show of social support. It is not entirely clear whether the residents came voluntarily to support the criminals or whether they were forced to do so, as some journalists pointed out on social networks. López Obrador pointed out this Monday that the criminals – “who are very good at propaganda” – published the video with the intention of showing “people who apparently receive them”. “And yes, they may be support bases that exist in some parts of the country because they are getting food or out of fear because they are threatened, but that is not a general problem, it is a very localized problem.” “A region and it is already being addressed. The National Guard is already there,” he explained.
Despite the president’s attempt to downplay the significance of the images, the situation in the state is extreme, experts monitoring the region have long warned. The seams have been tight for months and are on the verge of bursting. Every week, Chiapas fills the pages of the national and local press with new events: loose pieces that together form a complex puzzle, a mosaic of violence of different stripes and signs: organized crime, massacres, femicides, kidnappings, sexual violence, disappearances, expulsions, Forced recruitment, militarization, paramilitarism, self-defense groups, guerrillas… The last 30 years have seen a latent armed conflict that only worsened with the emergence of the Sinaloa Cartel, the CJNG and various local mafia organizations contest control of the area.
A caravan of Sinaloa cartel gunmen enters a town in Chiapas to applause from neighbors.
The border with Guatemala is porous and three drug trafficking routes run through the Lacandona jungle, Frontera Comalapa and the Pacific coast. In addition, new mega-projects such as the Mayan train, tourism, natural resource exploitation and real estate speculation are making the region increasingly vulnerable to the outbreak of illegal businesses and mafias. Experts point out that the result is the destruction of the social fabric, particularly affecting women and indigenous communities. The Guatemalan government has also announced the deployment of troops to the border with Mexico to “ensure the security that our people need in the face of the threats posed by Mexican cartels currently operating in the area of Motozintla, Chiapas.”
Although authorities have not confirmed that the armed group paraded in the weekend images is the Sinaloa Cartel, there is ample evidence of their incursion into the area. On September 6, a commando broke into the community of Nueva Palestine in the Lacandona jungle, attacked the rural police and challenged the authorities by surrounding the commissioner’s house. He left a message: “From now on we take control of the city and the region.” They are members of the Sinaloa cartel, killers of Ismael El Mayo Zambada, the neighbors said in a public letter they sent to López Obrador and in which they called for military intervention.
The president this morning referred to the dispute over the southern border without mentioning the criminal groups involved, asserting that the problem is not as serious as it is portrayed in terms of homicides. “It turns out that on the border with Guatemala, in Chiapas, […] There are organized crime groups that are supposedly fighting over territory to create spaces, store drugs from Central America and gain control of that territory. And they face each other. Fortunately, there have not been many killings in Chiapas in general, and there have been these confrontations there recently, but there has been a lot of propaganda,” he said again.
The church and the teachers raise their voices
Warning calls are coming from many areas of society about the violence crisis in Chiapas. Not only human rights organizations, NGOs and Zapatistas have joined the call for help. The Catholic Church has also raised its voice against the armed maelstrom. In a statement with a desperate tone, high tension and sharp criticism, the Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas claimed: “As a diocesan church and civil society, the social crisis, the oppression and the presence of criminal groups have been constantly denounced.” However, there was no reaction for the people , the silence of the authorities endangers human integrity and shows us a failed and exceeded state and/or collaboration with criminal groups, from municipal and regional prosecutors, municipal presidents, the government state and federal [sic]“.
The conflict is spreading and affecting all areas of society. Road closures are the most obvious and high-profile examples, but the impacts also affect health, nutrition and education. According to the local press, on September 15, around 5,000 teachers in the Sierra Madre region announced that they were suspending their activities “due to the insecurity situation”: “We have the need and obligation to demonstrate in the face of the critical situation.” and the wave of violence taking place in our region,” they released in a statement.
López Obrador announced that the gunmen cut off electricity in the cities following the arrival of the criminal caravan this weekend. He has stated that Federal Electricity Commission and National Guard employees will be given guarantees of service restoration. López Obrador asked people to be patient with the government’s intervention, but also not to allow themselves to be put under pressure by criminal groups. “We work for the benefit of people, this is where wellness programs are used most often. Therefore, I send you a greeting and at the same time a call that you do not fall into illegal acts, that you do not allow yourself to be subjugated, that you do not become addicted, especially for all young people, and that I have already ordered that the National Guard in the “We want to have a stronger presence throughout the region and that we will continue to help,” he assured.
The president has named several analysts critical of the government and accused them of being spokesmen for crime. “They don’t even know Frontera Comalapa or Motozintla, but like that, in synchronized swimming, as if the drug trade dominates all of Chiapas and all of Mexico. That has a lot to do with the little content they have to attack us, so they make everything go viral,” he said. López Obrador assumes that the media battle between the two political poles, his movement and the conservatives, will continue, even more so now, in the run-up to the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections: “We will have to react.”, because “It’s all a network, not just of bots, but also of supporters of conservatism who operate on the networks and reproduce these messages,” he warned.
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