The Acteal Killings, Twelve Years On co's Supreme Court Tosses a Bombshell into Chiapas

[Judi Lynn]

August 24, 2009

The Acteal Killings, Twelve Years On
Mexico's Supreme Court Tosses a Bombshell into Chiapas
By JOHN ROSS

Mexico City
With immense sorrow etched into his weather-beaten face, the Tzotzil Indian farmer slowly mounted the imposing granite steps of Mexico's Supreme Court. Sebastian Perez Vazquez's job was a thankless one. As president of the civil group "Las Abejas" ("The Bees"), he was obliged to communicate the bad news to the villagers who had trekked up to the capital from their homes in the highlands of Chiapas ("Los Altos") that, after 12 years, the killers who had been convicted of murdering their mothers and fathers and grandparents and children at Acteal on December 22, 1997 would now be freed from prison on the instructions of four out of five Supreme Court justices because of procedural errors in their prosecutions.

The Abejas had dressed in their best clothes for the court hearing, the men in their short ornamental chujs (serapes) and the women in their finest huipiles (traditional blouses) and long embroidered skirts they wear as emblems of their Tzotzil roots but they had not even been allowed inside the courtroom to bear witness to the verdict of the justices. Heavily armed federal police patrolled the marble hallways of the court building on one corner of Mexico City's great Zocalo plaza intent on keeping the Indians out in the street.

Elena Perez Perez looked like the air had been sucked out of her. She had expected the exoneration of the killers but still could not staunch the tears that washed her bladed cheekbones. "We cry because we cannot find justice anywhere," Elena, who was 19 when the accused murdered her father and two eldest siblings, told a U.S. reporter. Maria Vazquez had lost nine family members in the massacre. She too had expected the justices' decision. "This court releases the killers but it cannot resuscitate the dead."

Early on the morning of December 22, 1997 three dozen armed men gathered on a lonely roadside in Chenalho county in the Altos of Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state, and began firing on women and children clustered around a clapboard chapel who were praying for peace on a promontory below. A detachment of 40 Chiapas police officers were stationed at a schoolhouse just meters away but made no effort to stop the killing.

The gunfire continued for the better part of the day, the shooters scouring the hillside for those who had escaped the first assault and finishing them off one by one. When they were done seven hours later, 49 Abejas were dead: 15 children, 21 women, nine men, and four babies who had been cut out of the wombs of their mothers and dashed against the rocks. The killers were determined to exterminate the "seed" of the Abejas.

The outside world learned of the massacre at Acteal when survivors straggled into San Cristobal de las Casas, the old colonial city that crowns the highlands, several hours later. A call went out to doctors to come to the Civil Hospital to treat the many wounded. One medic who responded to the call was Hermann Bellinghausen who doubles as correspondent for the left daily La Jornada in Chiapas. Hermann has accompanied the rebellion of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) since it exploded in the mountains and jungle of this deeply indigenous state on January 1, 1994. The Abejas were supporters of the Zapatistas but rejected the insurgents' use of weapons.

Around 10 PM that night, a Red Cross ambulance braved gunfire to reach the village of Acteal enclaved in the saw-toothed mountains about 45 minutes above San Cristobal and discovered state police officers stacking the corpses of the Indians, apparently preparing them for burning. Caught in the act, the cops gathered up the bodies and tossed them in a dump truck where they were driven down to the state capital in Tuxtla Gutierrez for "autopsies."

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross08242009.html