Stop the building of a "rural city"
in Chenalhó, Chiapas, Mexico

Chenhalhó is a municipio (comparable to a county) of around 30,000 persons in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost and poorest state. Most of the people are Mayan, Tzotzil speaking indigenous and most live in scattered hamlets near where they have their milpas or small plots to raise corn, beans and chilies. Some have a few acres where they raise coffee to make a little money. There is not enough land to split among the children and there is practically no work. Though a state with a small population, Chiapas is number one in the quantity of its citizens who migrate to the U.S.

When the Zapatista Army rose up on January 1, 1994 they temporarilly occuppied the nearby city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Many people in Chenalhó found new hope in the Zapatista's call for justice for poor "campesinos" (peasants). Many joined base communities in support of the Zapatistas. A group called the Abejas (bees) already had a strong presence in Chenalhó. They are a Catholic group enouraged in their formation by then Bishop Samuel Ruiz, and they have similar goals for social justice as the Zapatistas, but embrace only non-violent means.

With these groups espousing an overhaul of the economic and political structure there was a strong backlash from the establishment. The army that occuppied Chiapas in response to the uprising could not openly attack the Zapatistas because Mexican Civil Society had risen up and manifested in support of the Zapatista goals and had demanded a peaceful resolution that recognized the just demands. The Zapatistas and the PRI government (which had ruled Mexico for 70 years) were engaged in negotiations. So the army trained and armed paramilitaries who began to violently evict Zapatistas and Abejas from their homes and commit other acts of violence against them. The worst example of this occured in Acteal, a small hamlet in Chenalhó where Abeja refugees had gathered. There on December 23, 1997 PRI and army supported paramilitaries massacred 45 unarmed Abejas, the majority of them women and children. These tensions continue and Zapatistas and Abejas live in constant fear that violence against them will errupt anew.

This is the context in which the government proposes to build a "rural city" in Chenalhó and in which the parish of San Pedro Chenalhó has organized protests against the building of such a city. The protestors fear that they will be separated from their land, and thus from their culture, that they and their children will have no choice but to do meaningless work in plants for multinationals while the large corporations rape their land for mineral wealth. They affirm that there has been no meaningful consultation of the people in regard to this plan. Underneath it all lurks the suspicion that this is a plan to contain and defuse the social justice movement in the municipio by resettling the people on the model of the "model cities" of Vietnam or Guatemala or the reducciones of colonial Mexico.

Only a sustained outcry internationally and by the people of Mexico and of the Highlands region can stop this project. Your letters to the President of Mexico, Felipe Calderón, and to the Governor of Chiapas, Juan Sabines will have a strong impact.

Also it is appropriate to ask Hilary Clinton, the Secretary of State of the U.S.A., to intervene and to voice concerns that the human rights of indigenous people are being ignored.

Below you can download and read the protest letter written by the Parish Council of San Pedro Chenalhó in English translation or in the original Spanish.

There are fax or strreet addresses and EMAIL LINKS for contacting the President and the Governor. And you can DOWNLOAD SAMPLE LETTERS in English or in Spanish, which you can then personalize or modify if you wish and paste into an email or Fax to the Governor and President and to Hilary Clinton.

Juan Sabines
Governor of Chiapas
FAX: 61 8-80-86
email: juansabines@chiapas.gob.mx

Felipe Calderón
President of Mexico
email: felipe.calderon@presidencia.gob.mx
Residencia Oficial de los Pinos Casa Miguel Alemán
Col. San Miguel Chapultepec, C.P. 11850, DISTRITO FEDERAL, México

Hillary Clinton
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520
Please send by regular mail

Letter of Parish of Chenalhó to Defenders of Human Rights in English (Word)

Letter of Parish of Chenalhó to Defenders of Human Rights in Spanish (Word)

Second Communication from the Parish of Chenalhó in English (Word)

Second Communication from the Parish of Chenalhó in Spanish (Word)