Chiapas Conflict

The Chiapas Conflict refers to an ongoing conflict between the EZLN and Mexican government, police and military for control of Zapatista Communities and the Lacandon Jungle.

## Timeline

* **14 March 1997**: In San Pedro Nixtalucum (Municipality of El Bosque), the state police assault civilians sympathetic to the EZLN, resulting in 4 deaths, 29 wounded, 27 detained and 300 displaced.
* **4 November 1997**: Attack by anti-Zapatista paramilitaries on the bishops of the Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas near Tila, Northern zone of Chiapas.
* **22 December 1997**: Massacre by right-wing paramilitaries of 45 people, the majority of whom are children and women belonging to the civil group "Las Abejas," refugees in Acteal, municipality of Chenalhó.
* **11 April 1998**: The autonomous municipality Ricardo Flores Magón is dismantled in a police and military operation in the community of Taniperlas, municipality of Ocosingo. Nine Mexicans are detained and twelve foreigners are expelled from the country.

* **1 May 1998**: In a police and military operation the autonomous municipality of Tierra y Libertad, with its municipal seat in Amparo Agua Tinta, is dismantled. 53 people are detained.

* **3 June 1998**: In a joint police and military operation, more than a thousand members of the security forces enter Nicolás Ruiz. The police detain more than 100 community members.
* **10 June 1998**: In a military and police operation to dismantle the autonomous municipality of San Juan de la Libertad, located in El Bosque, 8 civilians and 2 police are killed.

* **3 August 1998**: The Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Center for Human Rights releases a report that says that in the last 6 months in Chiapas there were registered 57 summary executions, 6 political assassinations and more than 185 expulsions of foreigners. It denounces that in these times there were in the state a number of cases of grave torture, dozens of attempts on the lives of Human Rights Defenders; and against civil organizations and social leaders; and hundreds of military and police actions in the conflict zone.
* **1 June 1999**: Significant increase in military and police incursions in Zapatista communities begins; arbitrary detentions of presumed Zapatistas; harassment by military personnel at the military bases; and concentration of troops. Each of the incursions involves the participation of between 100 and 1000 military and police personnel.
* **26 August 1999**: Confrontation between the army and Zapatista support bases in the community of San José la Esperanza, municipality of Las Margaritas. Three indigenous people are detained and 7 military personnel receive machete wounds.
* **18 October 2000**: President Zedillo expropriates 3.5 hectares of the ejido Amador Hernández, a Zapatista community in the municipality of Ocosingo, to build new military installations.
* **13 November 2000**: The community of Miguel Utrilla, municipality of Chenalhó, violently prevents the Procurer General of the Republic from carrying out an operation composed of 150 federal judicial police and 20 agents of the Public Ministry the goal of which is to look for firearms in the hand of paramilitaries.
* **19 October 2001**: The assassination of Digna Ochoa, lawyer and human rights defender. More than 80 NGOs demand an expeditious investigation of the assassination.
* **7 December 2001**: During the year, the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Center for Human Rights has documented 45 cases of human rights violations in Chiapas. It declares that it is an important decrease in terms of past governments, but at the same time the fact that there have not been forceful responses to the denunciations "opens the door for more violations to continue to be committed."

* **31 July 2002**: The autonomous municipality Ricardo Flores Magón denounces that a group of 40 armed paramilitaries from the PRI community San Antonio Escobar, attacked the Zapatista support bases in the La Culebra ejido.

* **7 August 2002**: José López Santiz, tzeltal campesino and EZLN supporter, is executed on the outskirts of the community 6 de August, of the autonomous municipality 17 de November.
* **25 August 2002**: At the Amaytic Ranch, armed PRI supporters kill two Zapatista authorities of the autonomous municipality Ricardo Flores Magón (Ocosingo). Another Zapatista is assassinated in the autonomous municipality of Olga Isabel (Chilón).
* **2 September 2002**: Declarations from the Attorney General of Chiapas, Mariano Herrán Salvati on the death of four Zapatistas last August conflict about "traditions and customs or bands of delinquents." "There have been found in these conflicts no undertones of an ideological order."
* **6 July 2003**: Violent acts take place during the legislative elections in indigenous regions of Chiapas, principally in San Juan Cancuc, Zinacantán and Chenalhó. At the federal level, the largest rate of absenteeism was registered in the recent history of the country.
* **September/October 2003**: A series of conflicts between members of the Independent Center of Agricultural Workers and Campesinos (CIOAC) and Zapatistas, around the detention of Armín Morales Jiménez by militants of the EZLN for the accused crime of abuse of confidence.
* **22 January 2004**: The houses of the community of Nuevo San Rafael in Montes Azules Reserve were all burned. According to the Secretary of Agrarian Reform (SRA), the inhabitants had voluntarily decided to abandon their homes and return to their places of origin. NGOs accused the SRA of having divided the population so as to force residents to leave the reserve.
* **10 April 2004**: Zapatista supporters from the municipality of Zinacantán were ambushed by members of the PRD, leaving dozens wounded and displacing 125 Zapatista families.
* **23 April 2004**: Noel Pável González, student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the National School of Anthropology and History, was found murdered in Mexico City. Elements of the investigation point towards the involvement of the ultra-right group "El Yunque."
* **4 July 2004**: Families from the community of San Francisco El Caracol in the Montes Azules Reserve were moved by the government to a "new population center" called Santa Martha in the municipality of Marqués de Comillas.

* **23 January 2005**: In the municipality of Palenque, 160 Tzeltal families were displaced from the biosphere reserve of Montes Azules to the community of Nuevo Montes Azules.
* **15 August 2005**: The Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center once again denounced the forced displacement of several families in the community of Andrés Quintana Roo, in the municipality of Sabanilla, due to aggression and threats made by people linked to "Development, Peace, and Justice" (Spanish: *Desarollo, Paz y Justicia*)
* **6 September 2005**: A confrontation between Zapatista support bases and the rest of the population in the community of Belisario Domínguez in the municipality of Salto de Agua.
* **Mid October 2005**: Members of the Organization for Indigenous and Campesino Defense (OPDDIC) were planning to dismantle the autonomous municipality of Olga Isabel, and detain the local authorities.
* **2 November 2005**: In El Limar, in the municipality of Tila in the Northern Zone of Chiapas, over 200 people from eleven communities met to commemorate the more than 120 murdered or disappeared individuals from the region between 1994 and 2000.
* **5 August 2006**: A violent police operation was carried out to expel 30 Zapatista families in the community of the Ch'oles, autonomous municipality El Trabajo (Tumbalá), in the Northern Zone.
* **13 November 2006**: Violent confrontation in the natural reserve of Montes Azules, Chiapas. Hundreds of armed peasants from the Lacandona Community attack 17 families living in Viejo Velasco Suárez. As it happened in a very isolated area, this aggression brought great confusion about the number of victims and their possible belonging to EZLN. Finally the outcome was: 4 people dead (including a pregnant woman) and 4 people disappeared, probably executed.
* **18 August 2007**: A joint police and military operation to evict 39 families (members of the communities of Buen Samaritano and San Manuel, in the municipality of Ocosingo) was conducted in the Biospheric Reserve of Montes Azules.

* **27 April 2008**: At least 500 police violently entered the community of Cruztón, in the municipality of Venustiano Carranza, Chiapas.
* **4 June 2008**: A military and police incursion in the vicinity of the Zapatista Caracol (local administrative center) La Garrucha, as well as in the support base communities of the EZLN, Hermenegildo Galeana and San Alejandro.
* **23 July 2008**: The Human Rights Center Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas denounced that state police assaulted campesinos as well as observers from the Other Campaign in the community of Cruztón, in the municipality of Venustiano Carranza.
* **3 October 2008**: A violent operation carried out by federal and state police left a toll of six dead (4 of whom were executed according to the testimony of community members), 17 wounded, and 36 people detained, almost all of whom were members of the ejido Miguel Hidalgo, located in the municipality La Trinitaria, Chiapas.
* **2 February 2011**: 1 soldier killed, 117 "Zapatista sympathizers" arrested.
* **2 May 2014**: 1 killed, 15 wounded.

## References

1. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiapas\_conflict#List\_of\_violent\_incidents\_(1994%E2%80%93present)