Chiapas indigenous people take refuge in school due to attacks by the criminal group ‘Los Herrera’

Indigenous people from the community of Tzanembolom, Chiapas, abandoned their homes and ran to take refuge in the only school in the town after being attacked by the criminal group identified as “Los Herrera.”

Testimonies from residents collected by journalist Elio Henríquez for the newspaper La Jornada confirm that the group of “Los Herrera” attacked them with bullets during the afternoon and evening of Wednesday, so they decided to flee their homes.

According to their statements, the armed group is concentrated in a region known as Fracción Tzanembolom and there were more than 100 well-armed elements who entered the indigenous community and barricaded themselves in the homes of the inhabitants.

Although the authorities sent a convoy with 20 elements of the Mexican Army, they could do little against the force of “Los Herrera,” so they limited themselves to giving a little food to the inhabitants, since they mention that they left in a hurry and left everything in their houses.

“The situation is very hard, we are locked in the school. Women and children are sad and crying. We no longer have food, since everything was left in the houses,” said one of the residents of Tzanembolom.

It is worth remembering that the indigenous community attacked belongs to the municipality of Chenalhó, located in the mountainous area north of the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas, and that it had been controlled – for years – by the criminal group headed by José Guadalupe Herrera Abarca and Rubén Estanislao Herrera Gutiérrez, until a self-defense group called “El Machete” confronted them.

According to information on the Pueblos de América website, the community of Tzanembolom has a total of 152 inhabitants (data updated to 2020), 74 women and 78 men, all belonging to the indigenous population and of which 84 percent speak an indigenous language.

Nearly 25 percent of the population is illiterate, 63 percent do not speak Spanish; only 28 percent of its inhabitants have a job; they have electricity but no internet; few (21 percent) have a television; less than 3 percent have a refrigerator; there are few washing machines and cars (almost zero).

Most of the complaints from the residents of Tzanembolom were made on social networks, where they also encountered resistance from some pages that share information and point to the self-defense group “El Machete” as responsible for the attacks.

It is worth remembering that in July 2021, the appearance of a self-defense group called El Machete was recorded and which appeared in the municipality of Pantelhó and on that occasion one of the members assured that the group was created due to “injustice, to defend their lives and against drug hitmen.”

By July 2023, various rural groups in the municipality of Chenalhó demanded that Governor Rutilio Escandón Cadenas and the Chiapas Prosecutor’s Office dismantle Los Herrera, whom they identified as the alleged perpetrators of violent actions in the municipality of Pantelhó.

In the words of the region’s residents, “Los Herrera” seek to regain control of the area with the help of other larger criminal groups, who provide them with weapons to attack residents and self-defense groups.

Source: infobae