EZLN Says the Three Levels of Government Are Trying to Prevent It From Meeting With Searching Mothers in Mexico City

ByElio Henríquez

This article by Elio Henríquez originally appeared in the November 2, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) stated that the federal government, the Chiapas state government and various municipal governments have undertaken various “provocations” to prevent a delegation of 1,530 of its members from traveling to Mexico City to meet in December with searching mothers.

“They are playing with fire. The embrace for the searching mothers is a civil and peaceful initiative. It does not seek to confront anyone,” the EZLN maintained, while stressing:

We are going to go. Whether they like it or not, we are going to go.

EZLN

In a communiqué signed by Subcomandante Moisés and by the Assembly of Collectives of Zapatista Autonomous Governments (A.C.G.A.Z.) and Common Governments of the 12 Zapatista Caracoles, the EZLN recalled that “in July of this year, we announced our intention to travel to Mexico City to meet with groups, collectives, and families without a group, of Searching Family Members. Not for assemblies, not to create new networks or coordinating bodies, but to listen, group by group, family by family, to their stories and the stories of their absent ones. And also, if they accept it, to give them an embrace sent by the Zapatista communities.”

It said that “we named Mexico City as the central venue to spare the families with absent ones the wear and expense that coming all the way to Zapatista territory would have meant,” but “since then, the federal government, the Chiapas state government and various municipal governments have carried out a series of actions that not only violate human rights (not only of Zapatistas, but also of party members and those without a party), they also contradict the discourse of peace, happiness and well-being that they preach up there.”

It stressed that “the simplest way to prevent us from going to Mexico City is to satisfy the demand for truth and justice of those who have lost their loved ones to unnatural causes. That way those searching families will tell us: don’t come anymore, we are satisfied.”

It added: “Bring thousands and tens of thousands of armies. Explain to the troops and to society that they are going to try to stop a mobilization that aims to give an embrace and listen to the pain of others. What we are going to do is called ‘empathy,’ something they apparently lack.”

It stated that “up there, at the federal, state and municipal level, they have to understand that we are going to go (it may be that some of ours are already there) to Mexico City, we are going to meet with the searching families who want to and can in Mexico City, in Veracruz, in Puebla, in Jalisco, in Oaxaca and in Querétaro; we are going to listen to the story of their pain; we are going to embrace them; we are going to keep their word in our morraletas; we are going to bring their stories back and we are going to keep them so that oblivion and indifference do not stain them.”

It noted that “any provocation will be answered with force and mobilization. They have to decide whether they accept that fact and settle for us keeping our word. Or they can continue with their blunders (in which the entire federal and state cabinet and the municipal presidencies are involved) and give our initiative a different character. We are not going to make noise, but we can.”

Regarding the “provocations,” the EZLN detailed that “in the La Culebra ejido, in the official municipality of Ocosingo (governed by the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico), they continue to harass, threaten and jail families who are support bases. Those who provoke there are members of the Cartel of Mario Delgado, federal Secretary of Public Education. The main hitman is Eusebio Cruz Ruiz, who presents himself as a teacher and who says he receives direct orders from Mario Delgado.”

It pointed out that “now they have gone a step further by prohibiting everyone from going to the compas’ cooperative store under penalty of jail. And, also, that any resident of that ejido or of nearby communities who is treated at the common clinic (which serves Zapatistas, party members and those without a party), will be jailed and fined. Whoever does not obey is taken prisoner.”

It asserted that “we are not making this up” and “in addition to prohibiting free transit, free trade and access to health care, they ‘respectfully’ put in jail and fine whoever does not obey them, not only in the ejido, but in all the surrounding communities.”

It stated that “on the so-called San Cristóbal–Palenque highway, which is a federal project, the National Guard, the State Police, the municipal police and the landowner named Audamaro Oropeza Camacho destroyed Common property on land recovered more than 32 years ago, knocked down the signs indicating that this land was part of the Good Government Council and now belongs to the Common; they stole cattle from the Common, deliberately destroyed milpas and forests, with the support and approval of the municipal and state authorities of Chiapas.”

The complaints, it said, “have already been made before Frayba (Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center) several times, and it already presented them to federal and state authorities without there being any response, neither in word nor in action.”

It concluded: “Whatever is going to happen, say publicly that it will be to satisfy a hitman of Mario Delgado, so that a landowner, Audomaro Oropeza Camacho, can steal more cattle and land from the Zapatista Indigenous people, and to impose a highway that is rejected by all the original inhabitants of the area. There you have it. Forewarned is forearmed.”