Women and the intensification of war in Chiapas

A woman walks in the municipality of Chilón, Chiapas, on July 12, 2024. Photo © Gio Leal.

Opinion • Delmy Tania Cruz Hernández • July 16, 2024 • Leer en castellano

The war against organized Indigenous peoples in Chiapas, launched by the Mexican state after the Zapatista uprising, continues unabated. Paramilitary groups have expanded their presence in the region over the past decades, which has allowed organized crime to gain a foothold.

These armed actors operate through opaque networks, and seek far more than territorial control. Today, they want to destroy organizing and gain absolute control.  

The Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Center for Human Rights (Frayba) produced one of the best overviews of the situation in Chiapas. But after reading their report, I wondered: What about women? How does this violence affect us? 

These questions are urgent, especially given that we will have a woman as head of state for the next six years. 

I am not naïve. I do not think that President-Elect Claudia Sheinbaum can stop the violence. Rather, my aim is to say what has not been said in this corner of Mexico, which hegemonic narratives have overlooked once again. 

A continuum of violence against women's bodies is part of the carnage left by low intensity warfare in this region. Female and feminized bodies have been treated as war booty for decades. That is why we must take a feminist approach to what is happening in this part of southeastern Mexico.  

Ongoing violence

Between January and May of this year, there were 19 femicides, 23 possible femicides, 29 attempted femicides and 76 disappearances of women, according to the Feminist Observatory of Violence Against Women in Chiapas. The number of possible femicides and of attempted femicides has increased since last year. Women between 25- and 29- years old are most at risk of being killed. 

Most of these killings are classified as sexual-systemic femicides, which means elements linked to organized crime are present. This kind of femicide has increased considerably over the last five years. The growth sexual-systemic femicides is especially notable in the Soconusco and Frontera Media regions, which are home to the two main migratory routes in the state, according to Dr. Karla Somosa Ibarra, founder of the Feminist Observatory.

Frayba’s report states that from 2010 to October 2022, at least 16,755 people were forcibly displaced, including entire families. When families flee violence, women often lead the effort to find a new place to live. This is particularly clear in the municipalities of Trinitaria and Margaritas, in the Sierra-Frontera zone of Chiapas, a key border area with Guatemala. 

Women are under siege in this war against the people. They often have to change their daily schedules to avoid blockades. "You can’t leave after 7 pm, because men in pickup trucks set up roadblocks," a 28-year-old woman who works in tomato greenhouses in the municipality of Margaritas told me. She, like the other women from communities under attack that I spoke with, asked to remain anonymous.

"I don't even know who my neighbor is anymore, I only know that his house is under surveillance,” said Miranda as we finished cooking for a workshop that we will host. “I heard that he had something to do with the problem of the migrants who were in an accident last year."

In Chiapas, as in other parts of Mexico, local mayors make pacts with criminal groups. They come to community assemblies with pre-arranged deals that affect communal life and women, such as those relating to the sale of alcohol or the sale of lots to people outside of the communities. 

Women fear for their daughters, their territories and the men in their lives. When they have to leave their communities, they do so carrying their lives on their backs. They seek refuge elsewhere when their spouses or sons are intimidated into joining the ranks of drug traffickers or their daughters are forced into romantic relationships with members of a criminal group. 

Criminal groups often force those who stay and try to make a living in the midst of the occupation to participate in money laundering.

"Every day they ask us to go and collect money and give it to them. They deposit it and force us to go out and collect again. If we refuse, there’s no telling what they’ll do to us," said another woman, as we shopped together in the market. 

Strategies for life

With everything that’s happening around us, there are a few groups of women, men and families who try to swim against the tide. In municipalities like Comitán, Margaritas and La Trinitaria, we organize autonomously to recover spaces that criminal pacts have taken from us. 

Women are at the forefront of this activism. We are the ones who speak out when we learn about deals between municipal authorities and criminal groups. We encourage other women to reflect and strengthen their hearts to break the chains and scars left by patriarchal violence. 

In the midst of this war against the people, we keep up hope by creating safe places in which we can talk to one another, heal ourselves, and encourage our families and neighborhoods to walk collectively and without fear. We are building community health centers for displaced families who are sick. We ask men to break with the patriarchal pact and stop violence against women, so that they can join the collective project that we dream of.

In the same quiet and steady way, Zapatismo lives and recreates strategies to bring us together. A handful of church members have also denounced the violence and opened spaces in which more people can reflect together, but their own institution has attacked them and criminal groups have threatened them.

Claudia, we don't trust you

Following Sheinbaum’s landslide electoral victory, voices coming out of different feminist traditions have spoken up. On social networks, some celebrated the fact that a woman will lead the country, saying that the suffragette struggle has finally won. There are more timid voices that question and suggest that this election does not represent continuity, but possibility. Some Indigenous women compañeras have applauded the achievement of making a woman the head of state.

I wonder if these analyses reflect a white-mestizo imaginary of democracy that has won over. Or has the hope of recreating other worlds outside of the state been lost?

During her campaign, Sheinbaum spoke of carrying on the ecocide wrought by the so-called Mayan Train. She reaffirmed her commitment to the construction of development poles in Mexico’s southeast, starting with Tapachula, a border city between Chiapas and Guatemala. 

Of course, there are also voices of organized women who say: “Claudia, I don't trust you!” I do not believe you can revolt against the imposed desire of your boss, nor that your environmentalism will stop the planet’s temperature from increasing by 2.5 degrees. I don't believe that militarizing the country is the solution or that posting the National Guard to Chiapas’s borders, in an imitation of Trump's wall, will stop people from migrating. Nor do I believe that you will break with the extractivist advance.

Not all of us are buying what you are selling. A woman at the top will not change Mexico. We know this and will continue to build freedom beyond the ballot box.