Chiapas: Fr. Miguel's Acteal Journal Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit source - amanecer@aa.net Wed Feb 4 16:19:33 1998 Fr. Miguel's trip to Acteal The story of Chiapas is too long, too tragic to tell in a few brief lines. Even so, I believe there now has emerged one word, one event that sums up all the years of horror and all the days of hope embraced by this poor state which, since the Zapatista war cry of Ya Basta! in 1994, has become the heart and soul of Mexico's future. That word is ACTEAL, the name of a small Tsotsil Indian village in the highland municipality (county) of Chenalho where 45 souls were consumed by political violence December 22, 1997. While visiting my Dominican brothers and sisters in San Cristobal where I had worked for two years, I was able to visit the small mountain village of Acteal, nine days after the massacre. It was a special blessing for me to concelebrate at Eucharist above a common grave of 45 Tsotsil martyrs. I prayed in hope with their surviving brothers and sisters who grieved not only the loss of their loved ones but the tragic loss to the very soul of Mexico. The entire nation has been so shaken by this horrible event that the Secretary of Government, Emilio Chuayffet, the man in charge of Mexico's interior political policies, was forced to resign because of national and international indignation over such a brutal initiative. This moral tragedy, like so many others in Chiapas, has become even more nefarious because of the scandal of "official denial" and the mis-information campaigns which has not only angered the Mexican people but the international human rights community as well. The killing of innocent people alone is indignant and such a premeditated massacre cries to the heavens for justice. Planned and executed with the complicity of local, state, and federal authorities these innocent men, women and children lost their lives in a merciless attack that lasted four hours. This crime of the state, this unthinkable genocide is a shaking blow to the conscience of the people of Mexico. It has awakened the terrible realization that no matter how much one may hope for true and meaningful democratic change, the Ruling Institutional Party (PRI), which has monopolized government in Mexico for almost 70 years, is now exposed as the ruthless that has produced the tragedy of Acteal. Human Rights agencies confirm that 70 or more members of the local PRI, trained and armed by the Mexican Army, acted as a paramilitary death squad, killing with complete impunity (allowing official Security Forces not to be linked in this war crime). Calling themselves Mascara Rojo (Red Mask) this group of assassins spent four hours shooting down their defenseless Maya brothers and sisters who expressed sympathetic support for the Zapatista Army's effort to change Mexico. AK 47s blazed as 325 people fled from the small chapel made of tree posts and a banana leaves. Because death threats had been made several days earlier, the people decided there was nothing they could do but stay put, stay calm, and to pray for peace in the poor chapel. The fatal attack came only two days before Christmas Eve. By the time the carnage stopped 45 people had been murdered and twenty others wounded by expanding bullets (military issue). From the nearby village of Pohlo a cry for help had been phoned into Dominican Father, Gonzalo Ituarte, o.p. (Vicar for Peace and Justice in the Diocese and Pastor of Santo Domingo parish in San Cristobal). Fr. Gonzalo is also secretary for Bishop Samuel's peace mediation team (the CONAI) and so had direct access to state authorities whom he called at once to put a stop to the attack. He was ignored. Dominican Bishop Raul Vera, Coadjutor for the Diocese, upon his return from Rome (where he was promoting the canonization cause of Chiapas' first Bishop, Dominican Friar Bartolome de Las Casas) has joined Bishop Samuel Ruiz in condemning this violence and denouncing the forces of death represented by the paramilitary groups long supported by the government. Bishop Raul is under government attack because since his arrival in October 1995 he has joined his voice to the cry of the poor for justice. He has also called attention to the fact that it is the Federal Army and Public Security Police itself which is arming paramilitary groups. Unmasking the Government's disguised "peace" as a war of low intensity conflict, Bishop Raul was questioned by the Federal Attorney General's office in an attempt to discredit his recent statements implicating Government collusion in ethnocide. The massacre at Acteal has left the nation of Mexico feeling wounded and dismayed. Hope in the Government's good faith toward peace has melted into the air, giving way to the concrete realization that the Zapatista rebellion is rooted in a true cry for justice and authentic democracy. President Zedillo's government has no real intention for peace but for geo-political control of natural resources in the region. Indigenous resistance and autonomy directly threatens the overriding interests of free trade goals. The government's war strategy of annihilation is apparent in the facts that have come out from Acteal, one of these being the image of an infant dead in the arms of its mother (not to mention the unspeakable horror of several unborn children brutally cut from the wombs of their mothers, sending a strong message to any peasant sympathetic with the goals of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation). These Tsotsil indigenous campesinos are poor economically but twice poor since January of 1997 when they joined some 6,000 other campesinos who have been chased from their homes by political violence. Although the Zapatista Army has tried hard to keep its promise not to end any further possibility of peace talks by firing the first shot, at least 45 souls sympathetic to their cause came to die unjustly as vulnerable and sick refugees, far from their own lands and homes. Those who died at Acteal, one of them a catechist, are considered by many to be martyrs -- giving full witness to the life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The CONAI (national commission for intermediation), under the leadership of Bishop, Samuel Ruiz Garcia has asked three action steps of Mexican President, Ernesto Zedillo. 1) That he ask the National Congress to remove the Governor of Chiapas, Julio Caesar Ruiz Ferro, and if he and members of his administration are guilty of this crime that they be punished accordingly. 2) That President Zedillo order an immediate halt to all paramilitary activity and that these illegal groups be disarmed and punished. 3) That President Zedillo act to resolve (i.e., no longer avoid) the unjust causes of the conflict between the Federal Government and the rights and dignity of the indigenous peoples and all citizens of Mexico. That he show his decisive commitment to the peace dialogue process begun in 1996 by acting upon the Accords of San Andres (phase one) which his government already signed to with the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). The Zapatistas, tired of empty promises and "signed documents" will not return to the process until the government acts upon what it has already agreed to with its signature. Governor Ruiz Ferro is not an elected Governor, but was imposed upon the people by the Ruling Party in 1995. According to the national magazine Processo (Dec 1997), Ruiz Ferro is responsible for over 1, 500 political killings in Chiapas since he was put in office. The five paramilitary groups currently supported by state impunity and coordinated operations with police and military units in the region, are directly responsible for a dirty war of "low intensity conflicts", consistently terrorizing and impoverishing indigenous villages throughout the state. These people are violently displaced and forced to live as refugees in their own region. The reason for this violence is to engender conflict in a variety of forms, including side-show religious fights and fratricide among indigenous themselves in order to manage the chaos in favor of very powerful political and economic interests in the state. A house divided cannot stand, yet the Mayan people of Chiapas have had their eyes opened far too long to cease insisting upon a better life for everyone, organizing themselves into labor unions, cooperative production groups, and cultural promotion associations in order to build their own vision of the future in Chiapas. There efforts can be summed up by the word autonomy. Unfortunately, the desire for autonomy is diametrically opposed by the powerful interests of the State, exemplified not only by the presence of over 70,000 Federal troops and Security forces threatening Indian villages with arms, prostitution, and drugs, but the cultural sickness of ethnocide as well. With international pressure and increased political awareness among Mexicans, Acteal will not be a beginning of war but an ending of it. Ya Basta! "Enough already, no more death!" cry the Indian campesinos of Chiapas. Five Hundred Years earlier in Chiapas, when Fray Bartolome de Las Casas arrived as Bishop, the danger of ethnocide was also high, seemingly impossible to stop. His decisive moral action and interventions in search of the poor of Jesus Christ, put a stop to the irrational evil and the anti-gospel interests of the Catholic Christian Conquistadors. In his defense of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Las Casas fought hard for 50 years to contradict the then "legal" justifications for Conquest argued for by the political and economic interests in the Spanish Court of Emperor Charles and later King Philip. There is an ironic echo in Las Casas' retort to the arguments of his great enemy, the lawyer Dr. Juan Gines de Sepulvada who tried to convince the Court that Indians, identified as "pagans" should be subdued and subjected in all Christian charity. Because of all their bestial acts of idolatry and human sacrifice these non-Christians could be quickly constrained to believe by fire and the sword. The Dominicans, like Fr. Pablo Romo, o.p. of the Diocese' Human Rights Center in San Cristobal de Las Casas, argue anew today against the Mexican state's war in Acteal much as Las Casas pleaded five centuries earlier: I suppose that they mean, provided they are conducted with moderation, slaying only those whom it is necessary to slay in order to force the rest to submit, as if (the Spaniards) had shut up all the peoples of the New World in cages or dungeons and decided to cut off as many human heads daily as were sold in the meat markets each day for the nourishment and support of the people. As for arguments of idolatry and human sacrifice, Las Casas' words echo as hard today in our time as they ever did in his own time of the Sixteenth Century, noting how the deaths produced by the Conquest far out number any deaths produced by religious sacrifices of the Indian peoples encountered: These pagans sacrifice yearly thirty or a hundred or a thousand persons out of invincible ignorance (as I shall set forth hereafter), while the soldiers in question in waging war for this motive in a single day slay ten thousand innocent persons, with grave injury to their own souls (see Las Casas' book Apologia, 139v). He further establishes in another response to Dr. Sepulveda, the scandalous idolatry of the Christians themselves: The Doctor has reckoned ill. In all truth, it would be far more accurate to say that the Spaniards have sacrificed more to their beloved adored goddess Codicia ("greed" "covetousness") every single year that they have been in the Indies after entering each province than the Indians have sacrified to their gods throughout the Indies in a hundred years. (O.E. 5: 333b). On December 31st, after nine days of mourning, I was blessed to walk with the poor of Acteal as they moved in silence from their community of refuge in the nearby village of Pohlo to their simple homes in what was now a blood stained village. Giving witness to their hope in the Resurrection this people of faith marched carrying red bricks in their hands and card board roofing material on their backs to build a holy temple above the place where their friends and family were burried in a common grave on Christmas Day. The red bricks symbolize the blood of those who died, a strong source of life now, since their blood flows in the people who live to build anew the community of Acteal. Antonio, a ranking Catechist was killed in the attack. His sister Maria spoke about her brother and the others who had fallen, asking everyone present, even the international press, to pray for those who did the killing, to pray for changed hearts and forgiveness. Fr. Miguel Chantau, a French missionary priest in the Diocese for 30 years and the Pastor of San Pedro, Chenalho was visibly shaken as he prepared the Body and Blood of Christ for the community and the several hundred who had come to show support. As we celebrated the Eucharist in the traditional indigenous fashion, everyone knew that this blood would make the muddy ground we knelt upon a holy place of peace. At the Offertory, as special candles were lit to remember the 45 fallen brothers and sisters, sunlight penetrated bringing a special warmth and hope out of the dark low clouds covering the cool mountainous region of Chenalho. I am convinced that the fertile blood of those massacred will save the national soul of Mexico, and that the political violence suffered by the poor in Chiapas for the past 30 years, and even since the 1910 revolution, will finally stop. Only then will the indigenous and mestizo peoples of Mexico have their prayers answered and once again blossom in the ancient truth of being human -- Vinik Nichim, Vinik Ichim (Born of Flowers, Born of Corn). Perhaps in 1998 Maya and Mexican together may have their dignity, helping each other to grow in love. ___________________________________________________ NUEVO AMANECER PRESS- N.A.P. Non Profit organization translating and distributing information in support of the work in defense of human rights. 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