Acteal Detainees Released from Prison by Mexican Supreme Court Must Live in Exile Angeles Mariscal - CNN Mexico
go to original April 14, 2013

MV Note: The Acteal Massacre was the slaughter, on December 22, 1997, in the village of that name in Chiapas, of forty-five members of the pacifist group Las Abejas ("The Bees"), who were attending a prayer meeting. The group supports the goals of the Zapatistas. The massacre was carried out by the paramilitary group Mascara Roja, or Red Mask. (For more history, see Wikipedia).

Last Wednesday the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) ordered the release of fifteen additional indigenous arrested for the 1997 massacre in the community of Acteal, Chiapas. However, they will have to live in exile, since under an agreement with the local authorities they cannot return to their communities.

Secretary of Government of Chiapas, Noé Castañón León, told CNN México: "In the eyes of the community, they (those released) are guilty. Their return to Chenalhó (the municipality where Acteal is located) was too risky ... Because the legal exoneration granted by the Court one thing, but the other are the social perceptions of their innocence," he added.

To prevent violent incidents, authorities and those released in 1997 signed an agreement to prevent the exonerated indigenous people from returning to Chenalhó and to their home communities. The government would grant agricultural lands, a house and production projects, initially on accommodation (comodato, a legal concept that establishes that they can make use of the resources, but have no legal ownership of them) for a period of five years, after which the goods would become their property.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

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