Six people were killed during the early hours of Thursday in the mountainous community of Cerro de la Lumbreras, in the municipality of San Miguel Totolapan, in the Tierra Caliente region.
According to testimonies from residents, at four in the morning an armed group entered the community and directly attacked the home of the Hernández Solano family; six people were killed at the scene.
Residents identified four of the six victims by the names of Genaro, Milo, Porfirio, and Basilio; of the other two people, it is known that one was a woman with a disability.
They said the armed incursion was led by Leonel Barragán Tolentino, alias La Changa, an alleged member of the criminal organization Los Tlacos.
They explained that the attack occurred because the family refused to sell them their land. They detailed that for months the Hernández Solano family had been harassed to hand over their land and trees.
Following the attack, most of the residents fled, and they are now taking refuge in nearby towns.
Throughout this year, attacks on mountainous communities have been constant. The attacks share a common denominator: criminals attempt to depopulate the towns in order to take control of their natural resources, such as water and forests.
Just on August 21, an armed group arrived in the community of Los Bayados, in the mountainous area of the municipality of Ajuchitlán del Progreso, in Tierra Caliente, and attacked the residents. According to the account of one resident, the attack lasted eight hours.
This is not the first attack against Los Bayados. Three years ago, they suffered a similar attack; at that time, most of the town fled, and now eight families remain there, resisting in the middle of nowhere.
“We have been told that they want our land, but there is nothing here, we can barely survive,” said one resident.
Marginalized Area
The Sierra region —along with La Montaña— is one of the poorest areas in Guerrero. It consists of thousands of towns where there is almost nothing: no health centers, schools, roads, electricity, or drinking water. Some communities do not have a single paved road.
It is also a region that has been devastated by the Army’s counterinsurgency operations since the 1960s, during the period of the guerrilla movement led by teacher Lucio Cabañas Barrientos, and in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the presence of the Insurgent People’s Revolutionary Army (ERPI).
More than eight years ago, they lost the economic activity that had supported the region for many years: poppy cultivation. Fentanyl, a low-cost synthetic drug, displaced opium in the United States, and the price of a kilogram of gum fell from 30,000 to 6,000 pesos.
This crop stopped being profitable for local residents, but also for the criminal organizations that purchased their harvests. Everyone is seeking to replace what they previously obtained from poppy cultivation. Each group does so in its own way. Some ejidos have obtained official permits for sustainable forestry use. Criminal organizations opted for clandestine activities, dispossession, and violence.
A few weeks ago, La Familia Michoacana attacked the community of El Pescado with drones. The community is located in the Guajes de Ayala ejido, in the mountains of Coyuca de Catalán, also in the Tierra Caliente region.
Residents of El Pescado discovered a camp where La Familia Michoacana was organizing the attacks. There were dozens of homemade bombs, trenches, chemicals, and tactical equipment.
Javier Hernández Peñaloza, a resident of El Pescado, has stated it clearly: La Familia Michoacana wants their forests and their timber. They want to drive the residents out in order to take their natural resources.
In December 2022, around 100 members of La Familia Michoacana arrived in the community of El Durazno, in the mountains of Coyuca de Catalán. They called the residents to gather in the elementary school’s courtyard. As the first people were beginning to arrive, seven were murdered. The massacre occurred because they refused to give the criminal group their avocado orchards and forest.
Source: eluniversal
