La Jornada newspaper, by Abel Barrera Hernández, Director of the Tlachinollan Mountain Center for Human Rights in the Mexican state of Guerrero
April 22, 2021
“On the shore of the lagoon” where we sow corn and grow tomatoes and chili peppers, it is no longer a landscape of calm waters of the low mountains of Guerrero. It is a painful and very rugged place, where the traces of lead and the buzzing of bullets from cuernos de chivo (AK-47 assault rifles) are a constant threat. Even to herd the animals that go to drink water you must be accompanied, because if alone, you can be kidnapped or killed. The machete is no longer enough to face the dangers. The shotgun is a basic necessity. It is to defend our lives, because in the hills or in any other place we can be attacked.
The government security modules that were built on some roads are monuments to the corruption and pretense of the authorities. They’re not even good enough for graffiti or shelter from the rain. The roadblocks set up by criminal groups at crossroads and at the entrances to the communities are more effective. Obviously, they aren’t there to provide security to the population, but to cause terror. They’re barriers to prevent the entry of outsiders. Surveillance is day and night, to check which vehicles are local and which are from other places. Not only do they check luggage, they also interrogate the people inside the cars. If they find people from a rival group or who are unknown, they detain them. By radio, the bosses order what proceeds. Only with the bosses is freedom negotiated. It’s very risky to ask for police support, because in addition to not acting, they immediately inform the criminals that they have been asked for their intervention. It is usually more costly to denounce the crime than to seek contact with the immediate bosses to solve the problem.
The criminal encirclement works with another logic: to prevent external agents, whether from the state or private, from entering the territories where they have control of the population. They are filters to monopolize the economic activities in the region. Community power is broken and the clientelist politics of the parties are imposed. This scheme facilitates political co-optation and criminal corporatism. Political affiliation has come to be linked with criminal groups. Those who bet on a certain party and lose will not only be excluded from any support, but will also run the risk of being intimidated and a vendetta by those who control the community.
Halconeo1 is the most profitable activity for young people in the region. They are not very attracted by the federal Youth Building the Future program. In the Halconeo, they are provided with their work tools: uniforms, boots, AK-47 assault rifles and ammo, and a semi-professional salary with the guarantee of climbing the criminal career ladder, along with the opportunity to get loot in their armed incursions. The business of death in the depths of oblivion is synonymous with prosperity.
The creation of gangs or human settlements by the delinquents is to expand their territorial control beyond the agrarian limits. The takeover of police stations and the supplanting of community and agrarian authorities is to promote the annihilation of community order. The assemblies are disarticulated, there is no longer a board of authorities to coordinate. The gang leaders take possession of public spaces to legitimate their weapons.
They summon the heads of families and young people to implement the law of the trigger. They settle accounts with (get rid of) those they consider their enemies, and provoke the flight and displacement of families who have lost their parents or siblings. The decapitation of the civic-religious hierarchy opens the way for a group of killers led by young men who force women to prepare food for them, suffering discriminatory treatment and sexual aggression. Agrarian conflict is encouraged with neighboring communities in order to take over forests, water, fertile land and routes for the transfer of weapons and drugs.
The geopolitics designed over the centuries among indigenous peoples to expand their dominion are now being applied by organized crime. Criminal bosses have set themselves up as bloodthirsty caciques2 who have under their command gunmen who force the villagers to participate in crimes. In the municipal governments, the presidents act with a low profile. They are subordinated to the macro-criminal interests that are in play in the region. Parties and power groups know the route to follow where the power of narco exists. The public budget has to be exercised by mutual agreement with the bosses, as well as the collection of quotas, commercial activities, the halconeo and security, which is in the hands of those who have arrived to impose their own law, regardless of the candidates who may win in future elections.
The criminal structure is the core of local power, which no authority, police, army or National Guard dares to confront, let alone dismantle. They would have to receive orders from the Federal Government in order for the macro-criminal system to cease to be part of a local government based on corruption and impunity. A bureaucracy where the parties have become entrenched, functioning as brokers, selling candidacies to the highest bidder and securing their ties with organized crime.
The greatest tragedy is that the inhabitants of the communities have been trapped in the grip of the scheme. Community life has been disrupted. Neither state nor federal authorities pay any attention to this disaster. They only observe from a distance, through a screen in front of them, images that tell of a long history marked by discrimination and disgrace. They don’t believe the tragic stories of the widows and orphans, the displaced families and the children who can’t go to school or even tend their goats on the hill, because the rain of bullets can fall at any time.
The most serious thing is that the official side was left with the version of the authorities who live in the city, who stigmatize and criminalize the indigenous communities. They judge with their racist views, with the archetype of the barbarian indigenous, of the subdued rural poor . They decontextualize the facts, ignore the grievances and tear their clothes (Translator’s note: an act of mourning or sorrow) when they see the parade of the 34 armed children from Ayahualtempa. The children don’t go to school, because their middle school is in territory controlled by criminal groups. To take care of their goats they have to fight off armed aggressions, and in order to stay awake during the nights of shots being fired to harass them, they can’t stay on their dirt floors praying. That’s why they took up their weapons.
1Halconeo. In Mexico.The act of being a “halcón”. Halcón translates into English as falcon. It is a slang term for a thug hired by criminal groups to watch and report back the activities of their victims or rivals.
2Cacique. In México. A person who exercises a lot of power in the political or administrative affairs of a town or region, using money or other influence to control the lives of the locals.
English translation by Sexta Grietas del Norte. Original Spanish: https://www.jornada.com.mx/2021/04/22/opinion/016a1pol