"They're going to kill us": Displaced Guerrero residents, including 32 children, refuse to return to their town

Translated by El Profe for Borderland Beat from SinEmbargo

                      

Starting December 5, many families in the municipality of Zitlala have escaped violence in their village controlled by armed civilians linked to the criminal group Los Ardillos. This group  has been publicly identified as responsible for several murders and disappearances in that area. The displaced people declared that conditions for them to return to their homes are still unsafe, though state officials proposed otherwise.  

Meanwhile, yesterday, also in the mountains of Guerrero, in the municipality of Chilapa, community police clashed with members of the criminal group Los Ardillos on a road from El Paraíso de Tepila, Chilapa, with a preliminary count of 10 criminal deaths and several community police officers injured. After the confrontation, Roberto Álvarez Heredia reported that helicopters, soldiers, and state police are monitoring the area to discourage more acts of violence and protect the population.

-With information from Zacarías Cervantes, from El Sur

Chilpancingo, Guerrero, January 28 (El Sur / SinEmbargo)- Those displaced from Tlaltepanapa, municipality of Zitlala, yesterday demanded their relocation within the municipality of Copalillo, where they are now, and reiterated that they will not return to their town as the state government proposed, because they said they were sure that they would return only to be killed or disappeared by the armed group that kept them subdued during the last five years.

The 62 displaced, including 32 children of school age, left Tlaltempanapa on December 3, and for two nights and three days walked through hills and ravines, until December 5 when they arrived in Copalillo, where they were settled as refugees on a covered sports field.

 

At a press conference yesterday, at the facilities of the Guerrerense Network of Civil Rights Organizations (Rerdgro), members of a commission of displaced families declared that there are no safe conditions for them to return to Tlaltempanapa, as the secretary and the sub-secretary proposed on January 8 and 17.

 

The families fled the violence in their village controlled by armed civilians linked to the criminal group Los Ardillos, who have been publicly identified as responsible for several murders and disappearances in that area.

One of the members of the commission, Víctor Ojeda Hernández, recalled that on December 3 they left their town after the armed men entered the homes of his father Pedro Ojeda and his brother Javier Ojeda Hernández, as well as his uncle Victoriano Hernandez Tomatzin. "They took them by force, then beat them, bound their hands and feet and kidnapped them. We still do not know if they are alive or dead, they are still missing," he said.

While those armed civilians maintain checkpoints at the entrance and exit of Tlaltempanapa continue to cause violence and control the town, the State Government, through the Secretariat of Government, proposed to the displaced people to return to their community.

 

Yesterday, in the press conference, the displaced commission reported that in the last five years, when the majority of the population began to suffer violence, repression and robberies by the armed group, people been leaving the town and that of approximately 800 thousand inhabitants, currently only some 30 remained, the people who carry weapons and who control the area.

 

The members of the commission reported that they will not return to their town until the authorities arrest the members of the armed group, and present the three disappeared on December 3.

The displaced people denounced the authorities' failure of the three orders of government. The displaced do not believe that the authorities will permanently give them security if they return to Tlaltempanapa:

"The government just wants us to leave, but the Army or the police will not be with us all the time. I do not think that they will take care of us when we go to cut wood or the palm with which we weave, or that they takes care of us all night in our houses. We know that if we return we will be killed, it will not take more than three or four days," said another affected.

THE ATTACK IN CHILAPA

Yesterday, community police of the Regional Coordination of Community Authorities of the Founding Peoples (CRAC-PF) clashed with members of the criminal group Los Ardillos on a road from El Paraíso de Tepila, Chilapa, with a preliminary balance of 10 deaths on the side of the criminal group and several community police officers injured.

 

The confrontation began at 2:45 yesterday afternoon, when about 180 members of Los Ardillos tried to enter the communities of Rincón de Chautla and Zacapexco, but were fought off by some 600 community members, according to Jesús Plácido,  coordinator of the CRAC-PF.

 

The confrontation was extended to the nearby hills where several bodies and wounded people were scattered, as described by Jesús Plácido, who reported that the exchange of gunfire lasted more than an hour and a half until the strength of Los Ardillos dwindled, and they ended up retreating.

 

At night the spokesman for the State Coordination for the Construction of Peace, Roberto Álvarez confirmed the death of 10 people and two injured, but said that the clash occurred between two groups of community police.

MONITORING THE AREA

After the confrontation, Roberto Álvarez Heredia reported that helicopters, soldiers and state police are monitoring the area to discourage new acts of violence and protect the population.

In a communiqué it was reported that helicopters from the National Defense Secretariat and the State Public Security Secretariat were sent to patrol the area while soldiers and police conducted patrols.

He added that ministerial agents "verify the probable existence of new acts of violence and conduct research in the area," and that the injured are treated in hospitals in the health sector.

REMOVAL FROM COMMUNITIES

Another group of people displaced by the violence of the communities of Leonardo Bravo (Chichihualco) are refugees in the auditorium of the municipal capital, who insisted on their request to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador that the armed forces kick out the so-called Community policemen who have taken Filo de Caballos, so that they can return to their homes from which they fled last November.

On Saturday, they delivered a letter to the person who served as commissioner for the pacification process in the states of Guerrero, Morelos and Oaxaca, Álvaro Urreta Fernández, to be sent to López Obrador and the Undersecretary of the Interior, Alejandro Encinas.

 

In the document they ask for the withdrawal of the armed people who broke into Filo de Caballos on November 11th and from there extended to 8 more towns.

 

They demand the government get rid of those on the corridor that goes from Casa Verde to Corralitos, and that a perimeter of security to be installed in the limits of the municipalities of Leonardo Bravo and Heliodoro Castillo (Tlacotepec).

The director of the Regional Center for Human Rights José María Morelos y Pavón, Manuel Olivares Hernández, stated that the authorities have ignored the basic solution to the problem of displaced people in Chichihualco.

 

He denounced that the authorities of the state and federal governments "only make media statements to pretend that the problem is being solved, but they do not take concrete actions to resolve it."

He said that, for example, the government secretary Florencio Salazar Adame promised that there would be conditions made for the displaced people to return to their communities, but the displaced are seeing that there are still no such conditions as the armed people who displaced them are still in their villages after two weeks.

 

He recalled that the secretary told them at a meeting that their return to their communities would be analyzed at a meeting of the State Coordination for the Construction of Peace, that the agreements would not be made public but that they would try to put together a strategy of pacification so they could return to their villages in no later than one week.

 

However, two weeks have passed and it is still not known how conditions will be met for them to be able to return.