Today or Tomorrow, Displacements in Montes Azules, Chiapas

Taken from La Jornada Sunday, December 15, 2002
Translated by Tara Agrawal and Laura Raymond

Soldiers, PFP, and state police to enter, accompanied by MP agents
Today or Tomorrow, Displacement in Montes Azules

Airplanes and helicopters to participate in ¨surgical raid¨
The hope is to apprehend ¨leaders¨

Comitan, Chiapas
December 14, 2002

It is forecasted that in the following hours the federal government will finally launch the first operation to displace settlements and inhabited areas in Montes Azules and its surroundings. Arroyo San Pablo, known as Lucio Cabañas by its inhabitants, is at the top of the list because it is considered the newest.
It is said that ME 17 helicopters from the Marine Secretary and Procuraduria General de Justicia will carry out ¨surgical removal¨ in order to apprehend those authorities that are considered leaders of the settlements. This, according to sources, will occur Sunday or Monday (December 15 or 16th). Various denunciations and orders for apprehension have accumulated in these past few months and it seems that Semarnat and Profepa finally will carry out its' long awaited ¨pilot¨ project of displacement.
Other inhabited areas to be displaced in the short term are Nuevo Pichucalco, Nuevo Limar, Nuevo Salvador Allende, Nuevo San Rafael, Las Ruinas (Sol Paraiso), Ocho de Fabruero, and Arroyo Aguilar. Additionally, the federal authorities are also considering to proceed against El Buen Samaritano, whose settlements have been blamed for new clearcuts.
All are located in the southern area of Montes Azules on land reclaimed as the Lacandon zone, property of this ethnic group (Lacandon indigenous) by presidential decree three decades ago.
According to Profepa, the federal government hopes to displace some 250 indigenous.

The settlers of Arroyo San Pablo seem to be those whom have been violently expelled from their ejido in Rio Salina, in the region of Marques de Comillas, by members of the Independent Regional Campesino Movement (also known as Mocri). Indigenous families that are to be exiled could now end up in prison accused of environmental degredation and other crimes.

The indigenous populations that Semarnat and Profepa demand urgent displacement of are located in the southern vertex of Montes Azules within the margins of the Lacuntun river, very close to the border with Quiche, Guatemala between Nuevo San Andreas and Chajul. This space, reserved to promote research, prospection, tourist attractions of the first order, privileged commerce of species and wood, is a point of tension between conservation, transnationalization of natural resources and as a strategic area.

Militarization is intense on this edge of national territory where the constitional municipalities of Las Margaritas, Ocosingo and Marques de Comillas overlap. Communities are occupied or encircled by some ten Mexican Army positions along the route of Amparo Aguatinta-Maravilla Tenejapa-Ixcan-Flor de Cacao and others more towards the mountains.

The autonomous municipalities Libertad de Los Pueblos Mayans and Tierra de Libertad are located in this region. It is known that more than half of the settlements within Montes Azules are EZLN (Zapatista National Liberation Army) bases of support, belonging to diverse autnomous municipalities in the jungle and the border. Many others belong to the ARIC Independiente.

The authorities that are to arrive with Public Ministry agents hope to apprehend the leaders of the settlements and to remove from the area Choles, Tzotziles and Tzeltales. Behind them will arrive the Red Cross and the National Comission on Human Rights to verify that, before everything, ¨the proper conditions have been restored¨. The federal government gives the green right to the displacement at the same time that a boiling interest in foreign ¨ecotourist¨ investment projects has emerged which is ignorant of the pristine land, natural monuments, and biological treasures precisely in this corner of the country. The final natural resources that have yet to be sold.