Persecution, harassment and threats against journalists, human rights and land defenders, activists and social organisations are rampant in Oaxaca. It is a policy that makes the state the most dangerous for their activities. Since 2018 alone, documents the Alas y Raíces project, 58 defenders have been murdered and another six are missing.
While social discontent grows, the Secretary of Culture, Flavio Sosa Villavicencio – one of the leaders of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca in 2006, imprisoned two years after being accused of the crimes of criminal association, sedition and damage – defends the official figures of a decrease in crime rates.
However, he recognises: the governor’s uncompromising style, in his statements towards his adversaries, places us in a situation of shock, it must be said, and that generates a reaction.
In separate interviews, teachers and representatives of organizations warn of the risk that Governor Salomón Jara Cruz’s discourse and policy against organizations will harden and take a swipe. They also emphasize that his position of ignoring social movements is a historical contradiction for someone who, from the Democratic Peasant Union, led marches and sit-ins.
Salomón Jara is vengeful and autocratic. An old militant of the UCD cannot be blind and deaf, his main problem is ungovernability; drug trafficking and violence have grown enormously, describes Professor Rogelio Vargas Garfias, of the Union of Education Workers (UTE), which emerged in 1979.
The teacher maintains that a central strategy of Jara Cruz to prevent social opposition is to divide and ignore organizations. There are some that are already aligned, he emphasizes.
– Are you looking for demobilization?
– Yes, of course. Today, for example, Section 22 has no proposal for a state law, nor a position regarding the expulsion of migrants. I asked the governor what he thinks of a new law, and the answer was nothing, I’m not interested. Why confront each other?
The professor says that a movement is beginning to take shape in the state, which, although apparently isolated, looks strong and prefigures Jara’s resignation and the revocation of his mandate as one of its social demands.
The recently formed Anti-Capitalist Unit of Organized Peoples of Oaxaca (Unapo) has already begun to take positions, as occurred in the face of the murder of Arnoldo Nicolás Romero, commissioner of communal property in Buena Vista Mixe, San Guichicovi, and activist of the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Northern Zone of the Isthmus (Ucizoni).
The crime was condemned in a joint statement by organizations grouped in Unapo, in which they highlighted how the situation of conflict and violence in the region is a product of the imposition of the interoceanic project of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and demanded an expeditious investigation of the crime.
Carlos Beas Torres, leader of Ucizoni, confirmed that a growing movement has emerged that will participate to achieve the revocation of Jara Cruz’s mandate in 2026.
“And that also provokes a narrative, often very poorly done, by the state government to ensure that things are improving and it takes credit for major works such as the Isthmus highway, which was developed with federal funds. It hangs medals that do not correspond to it.
Oaxaca continues to be the state in which there are the greatest number of attacks on defenders of human and territorial rights. In the case of Ucizoni, 24 colleagues are accused of completely irreversible crimes: to force them to give up their land, in exchange for a pittance, they are criminalized by people who supposedly own land in rights of way. They want to give them crumbs. That is very aggressive.
He warns that there is a very authoritarian approach to social unrest. The Secretary of Government (Jesús Romero) is accused of being a student of Ulises Ruiz.
Through its project Wings and Roots, the organization Services for an Alternative Education (Educa) keeps a count of persecuted human rights defenders, presented on the eve of the commemoration of the Faithful Departed.
Of 225 defenders murdered in Mexico between 2018 and 2025, 58 were from Oaxaca; 27 in the Mixteca, 11 on the Coast, nine in the Sierra Sur, seven in the Isthmus, two in the Central Valleys and two in the Basin, the report on its website states.
Marcos Leyva, a human rights defender and member of Educa, highlights that the monitoring of attacks includes names and struggles of the defenders, because they are not just a number, but a concrete struggle for which they were killed or attacked.
The database is open to consultation. One of our conclusions is that the rights that are being violated the most are political rights, and those of the organization and defense of land and territory. Once again, the political right is beginning to take serious actions and positions, as in the 70s and 80s of the last century. There is also a criminalization of organizations that do not politically agree with the government and a high rate of impunity for the aggressions carried out by the political class.
However, he adds, the fact that Jara Cruz does not recognize the role of social and community organizations is also a failure to recognize his own history. It does a lot of harm to assume political hegemony, because that does not allow for the promotion of a process of governability, with social and political actors who are not part of the structure of his party.
–And could this phenomenon tend towards a hardening? Or is there prudence?
–No, the tendency is that there may be a hardening, because if there are no suitable channels to generate the conditions of governability, that can explode at any moment. It is important to generate dialogue.
–Can there be a slap in the face?
–Exactly.
Flavio Sosa Villavicencio maintains that the criticisms of Jara come “from the old regime that refuses to die and it is logical that in such a complex state we find cases of aggression, injustice, crimes that have not been clarified, but one cannot speak of a government that kills opponents, of a youth-killing government, that uses the police for repression, far from the people and communities.”
In addition, he anticipates: next year there will be a recall of the mandate and it is the governor’s great opportunity to demonstrate to his adversaries that, in the new election, he will win the governorship.
However, José Álvaro Carrillo and Carlos Daniel Lara Juárez, from the Popular Revolutionary Front, believe that there is a strategy from the state government to dismantle the opposition.
Lara Juárez says that in the state there is “a prevailing social discontent, which comes from unorganized sectors such as the residents of Xoxocotlán and San Antonio de la Cal, who oppose the dump, but the repression does not come from the government, but from its shock groups, from its illegal arm. There is no ‘Oaxacan spring’, but rather an Oaxacan winter. In January, 69 murders were committed and one cannot speak of spring blooming with 69 homeless families.”
Carrillo adds that there is a permanent attack on social organizations and those who show a behavior contrary to the official discourse, including journalists. There is a permanent monitoring of organizations and an orchestrated division against the community process, he highlights.
The official campaign advocates dialogue, not a blockade, because they are concerned about the popular movement, and there is beginning to be a social discontent, he sums up.
Alejandro Cruz, from the Indian Organization for Human Rights in Oaxaca, agrees that there is social unrest in the face of many things. There are isolated reactions, but more will come from an organized nature. Changes always come from the organized social movement.
Source: jornada
