200 Indigenous Mexicans Violently Forced out of Vacant Lot

A rights group denounced the eviction of more than 200 displaced indigenous people from an empty lot in the municipality of Tlapa, Mexico, by a legal representative of the owner’s property.

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Constancio Sanchez Campos, the legal representative, showed up with two bulldozers and threatened the displaced indigenous people with evicting them by force unless they paid US$10.50 for each lot, reported Guerrero Digital.

The displaced people denounced Sanchez’s violent and illegal eviction without an official warrant.

“The perpetrators of the eviction burned the matresses that they [the indigenous people] were sleeping on, as well as their blankets, and the few beans and corn they had saved to eat, while all their belongings remain buried,” stated the Mountain of Tlachinollan Center for Human Rights.

Tlachinollan demanded an end to the violence against displaced people from the two municipalities and urged state intervention to protect the rights of, and guarantee the safety and relocation of the families.

On November 2018, more than 200 families displaced from their homes in the Cochoapa Grande and Metlatonocmade municipalities made the empty lot located in Colonia de Las Mesas their “provisional home,” according to Digital Guerrero.

“Our crops did not germinate, the lands we farmed did not yield, and our homes are in deplorable conditions. Our children are dying from vomiting and diarrhea for lack of medical attention,” said Nieve Mendoza Lorenzo, who forms part of the displaced indigenous people’s committee, according to Desinformemonos.

Mendoza added that displaced people’s children are unable to attend school for a lack of teachers.

These communities were hard hit by the Ingrid and Manuel storms in 2013, which greatly worsened their situation of poverty, and did not receive any help from the government, reported Desinformemonos.

This is not an isolated incident. Recently, Indigenous Mayan Chol people of San Jose el Bascan in Chiapas, southern Mexico, denounced a threat of eviction from their recovered territories by landowners hoping to sell the land.