Chiapas: Actions for the one-year anniversary of the Ayotzinapa disappearances

Zapatistas for Ayotzinapa @ Koman Ilel

On 26 September a year passed since the 43 students from the Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers College in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, were forcibly disappeared. In different states and abroad, actions and mobilizations were held to demand clarification for what happened to the youth as well as those killed and injured on the tragic night of 26-27 September 2014.

For its part, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) announced in a communique entitled “For pain, rage, truth, justice” that “on that day 26 September, thousands of Zapatistas, children, youth, women, men, others, elders, and the living and the dead will mobilize ourselves in our territories to embrace all those persons who have been affected by sorrow and rage due to the prisons, disappearances, and death imposed by those from above. We will embrace them also because thus we also embrace ourselves as Zapatistas. In this way we call on all honest and upright persons on Earth to do the same, according to your calendars and geographies, and in accordance with your times and means. While at the same time they seek to placate us with lies and insults using lack of truth and justice, humanity will continue to be nothing more than a grotesque face in the history of the Earth.”

Beyond this, the Las Abejas Civil Society of Acteal dedicated some words to the disappeared in a public communique, declaring that “we wish to be in the hearts of the parents of the young students; we wish to be in the heart of Ayotzinapa. We wish to be in the heart, the dream, the soul, the struggle, the memory, and the hope of the 43 disappeared, as well as the 3 murdered and the other comrade who remains in a coma. We also wish to be I the heart, dreams, memory, and hope of the thousands of disappeared throughout Mexico. We wish to be in the heart, dream, memory, and hope of the comrade women who have been victimized by femicides […]. But we do not wish to have a simulated justice, that justice full of corruption and hypocrisy, as the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) sought to sell to the parents of the 43 from Ayotzinapa and to the people of Mexico. Instead, what we wish for is a justice that would be as we always have stressed it must be: truthful, dignified, righteous, lasting, healthy, and human. This is what we call ‘The Other Justice.’ And this Other Justice we must develop ourselves from below, the women and women of good conscience […]. Ayotzinapa is a crime of State, and it must remain within the consciousness of the three levels of government in Mexico. As people of Mexico meanwhile we will walk and strive for the Other Justice, against this crime against humanity that targeted young students who had a dream of educating themselves to become educators in their communities. We will tell this to our children, our youth, so that it becomes living history.”

Beyond this, several people protested in the state in at least 40 municipalities, by carrying out marches, roadblocks, and cultural festivals.

For more information (in Spanish):

En Chiapas también el pueblo se organizó para exigir justicia y aparición con vida de los 43 estudiantes de Ayotzinapa (Voces Mesoamericanas, 29 de septiembre de 2015)

POR EL DOLOR, POR LA RABIA, POR LA VERDAD, POR LA JUSTICIA (EZLN 24 de septiembre de 2015)

Comunicado de Las Abejas de Acteal en solidaridad con Ayotzinapa (Las Abejas de Acteal, 26 de septiembre de 2015)

También en Chiapas hoy #DíaDeLaIndignación, manifestaciones de apoyo a Ayotzinapa (Chiapasparalelo, 26 de septiembre de 2015)

EZLN protesta en Chiapas por los desaparecidos de Ayotzinapa (La Jornada 26 de septiembre de 2015)

Congregan ciudades de Chiapas marchas por Ayotzinapa (El Universal, 26 de septiembre de 2015)

For more information from SIPAZ (in English):

Guerrero/National: “Fruitless” meeting between relatives of the disappeared from Ayotzinapa and EPN (8 October 2015)

Guerrero: Group of Experts on Ayotzinapa case presents its report 6 months on (13 September 2015)

Guerrero: Tlachinollan dedicates its XXI activity report to parents of the disappeared of Ayotzinapa (11 September 2015)