Translated from the website of the Greek magazine Resistencias
One killed and four injured, among them one seriously, is the result of the attack that suffered farmers of the ejido Mijiton, in the municipality of San Cristobal, by other farmers that refuse to participate in the communal works. Ejido Mijiton participates in the zapatistan Other Campaign and opposes the plans for the expropriation of its lands in order to construct a highway linking San Cristobal with Palenque. According to an article in the Indymedia Chiapas, the perpetrators are members of an evangelist religious organization called "Alas de Aguila" (Wings of the Eagle), which is functioning as a paramilitary organization called "Ejercito de Dios" (Army of God) and have borrowed slogans from the Guatemalan Kaibiles, that had perpetrated the worst massacres in the neighbor country. [This information is not mentioned in the statement of the residents of the ejido, though]. In any case as leader of the perpetrators is accused Carmen Diaz Lopez, who in 2002 was expelled from the ejido, accused of trafficking paperless immigrants, when 65 Central American immigrants were found at the yard of his house. The authorities of the ejido had delivered them to the official authorities along with Diaz Lopez, but he was released. Furious then, the residents of the ejido had burnt his house and had expelled him. Diaz Lopez tried to present the incidents as part of a religious conflict and managed to polarize the evangelists on his side.
According to a denouncement of the ejido, the recent attacks begun in the afternoon of 19th of July when residents of the ejido tried to measure fields in the area of Chixtetik but were prevented by 40 men of Diaz Lopez that arrived in 11 vehicles, armed with machetes, wooden sticks and stones. Worth to mention that in the same area Diaz Lopez had pale and cultivated land, while this is the spot to be expropriated for the construction of the highway. The residents of the ejido were forced to withdraw under the threats of Diaz's group. Meanwhile, in the morning of the same day, a resident of the ejido was kidnapped and transferred to the house of an evangelist priest, member of Diaz's group.
In the evening of 20th of July, 8 masked men on a pick-up truck, shot against another pick up truck belonging to another resident of the ejido. In the morning of 21 of July a group of residents from the ejido, responsible to watch the fields, was attacked with wooden sticks and stones by a group of 60 people that are refusing to participate in communal works. In the meantime, the same pick up truck, without number plates arrived, with 5 persons, among them 2 armed with R-15, that shot twice. Then, driving in high speed they hit and killed the 31-year-old member of the ejido Aurelio Diaz Hernandez. Another 5 people were injured from the attack of the pick up truck and the blows of the perpetrators, having fractures at the arms and legs and wounds in the head.
Behind the supposed to be religious clashes in Chiapas, there are hidden the existing problem of land (worsened by the rapidly increasing population and the fact that the agricultural production has not been modernized, resulting insufficient), and major economic interests, like the ones hidden behind the construction of the San Cristobal - Palenque highway. And of course, the attempt of the government to divide the indigenous people and to use some paramilitary indigenous groups, instead of the army, against the most radical ones (Zapatistas, Other Campaign).
