Legal Follow-Up to the Massacre

After the Acteal massacre on December 22, the authorities detained 96 persons, including 11 ex-public servants. Almost a year after the fact, all are in prison awaiting their trials. Among them is the PRI ex-mayor of Chenalho, Jacinto Arias Cruz, accused of supplying arms and protection to the executors, who is being held without release until sentencing. The charges against the ex-officials are transportation of fire arms intended for exclusive army use, assault and qualified homicide by omission.

The prosecutor systematically accused the detained of “organized crime” (according to his consideration the closest possibility for a charge against presumed paramilitaries). Nevertheless, the judges in charge maintained this qualification only for three persons. However, it seems almost impossible that some 90 persons executed 45 persons by being coincidentally in the same place on the same time.

The relatives of the accused protested in the state capital to seek freedom for the prisoners, until now without result. The present mayor of Chenalho, Pedro Mariano Arías Pérez, commented to SIPAZ in July, “The majority are innocent. We do not trust the investigation by Attorney General of the Republic.” On the other hand, Las Abejas (“The Bees”) identified at least 100 presumed paramilitaries that are still free. In a conversation with the representative of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) in Chiapas, Luis Jimenez Bueno, he stated that there are more existing arrest warrants against presumed authors of the massacre, but that they have not been executed in order “to not make the situation in the county more tense”.

In July the families of the victims of the massacre accepted 35 thousand pesos per relative killed and between 10 and 25 thousand for each wounded according to the severity of their injuries. However, for The Bees the quantity of the compensation is irrelevant: “It does not give our deaths back, and it will not change our lives.”

In mid-December it became known that 11 pubic servants received a ruling of administrative deprivation, which means that the officials will not be able to hold a public office for five to ten years. We recall that in the first months after the massacre, there were resignations and in other cases abandonments by public servants that had arrest warrants against them. Therefore, the commentary of a representative of the CNDH in Chiapas is not surprising, when he said to us that there exist arrest warrants against high officials but that they have not been made public so as to avoid the accused escaping from justice.

Concerning the explanation of what has happened in the massacre, there are still two contradictory versions. For some Mexican human rights organizations the lines of investigation consider the facts isolated; in this way it loses its political-criminal dimension that would value the massacre as an act of genocide or state terrorism. The official version inclines to understand the massacre as a result of a conflict between families and/or religious groups, removing all federal and state government responsibility. According to the Attorney General of the Republic Jorge Madrazo Cuellar, on December 20, when presenting his report: “The White Book About Acteal”, “… another important cause is the creation of an absolutely anti-constitutional institute, which is the autonomous council of Polho… and the already non-existance of the ‘rule of law’ in the county of Chenalho.” Furthermore, he added that he could affirm “that if the Mexican army would have been present in Acteal on December 22, 1997, the events never ould have taken place.” The Vicar of Justice and Peace of the Diocese of San Cristobal, Gonzalo Ituarte, criticized these conclusions. Among other things, he pointed out that the armed forces were indeed present at a distance of a few hundred yards from the massacre, and, moreover, accusing the Zapatistas of being the cause of the massacre addresses “indirect causes” yet ignores that the “direct cause” was the presence and actions of paramilitaries.