CNI
CALL TO THE MOBILIZATION IN DEFENSE OF LIFE IN AZQUELTÁN
To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
To the collectives, organizations, and networks of resistance on all continents
To the civil society in solidarity with the life of our people
From the Autonomous Indigenous Wixárika and Tepehuana Community of San Lorenzo de Azqueltán, municipality of Villa Guerrero, Jalisco, we issue an urgent call, born from the pain, the rage, and the living memory of our brother and agrarian authority Marcos Aguilar Rojas, assassinated on November 26, 2025, and of our compañero Gabriel Aguilar Rojas, gravely injured in the same attack.
Considering:
That our words arise in a dark time. The attack that took Marcos’s life was not an isolated incident: it is the direct consequence of decades of armed aggressions, invasions of our communal lands, paramilitary attacks, threats, and a full structure of complicity and impunity, as demonstrated in the document we have made public.
That the community faces extreme danger today. The caciques and their groups of aggressors —the gunmen of the past and the gunmen of the present— continue to gather, patrol our roads with total impunity, protected by judicial operators, police, and officials who block investigations, cover up crimes, and guarantee the continuation of the attacks.
That the violence is neither new nor isolated: it is a strategy of territorial dispossession, aiming to exterminate the community in order to seize thousands of hectares of communal lands that, since time immemorial, belong to our people.
WE CALL FOR
THE DAYS FOR LIFE IN AZQUELTÁN
to take place from December 6 to 10, with activities in different territories and geographies:
December 6
Press Conference
Guadalajara International Book Fair
Gathering: 12:00 p.m.
December 7
Vigil for Azqueltán
Guadalajara International Book Fair
Gathering: 6:00 p.m., bring candles
December 10
Mobilization in Mexico City
Mobilization in support of the Azqueltán community
Gathering: Torre del Caballito, 11:00 a.m.
December 10
Mobilization in the city of Guadalajara
Gathering: El Santuario, 11:00 a.m.
Call for Global Action
We call on conscious Indigenous peoples, human rights collectives and organizations, and national and international civil society to carry out decentralized actions in their territories, plazas, community centers, universities, embassies, or consulates from December 6 to 10, to amplify our fundamental demands.
Please register the actions to be carried out by writing to: cnicomunicacion@gmail.com
Justice for Marcos and Gabriel.
Punishment for the material and intellectual perpetrators, and guarantees of non-repetition.
Safety for the community of San Lorenzo de Azqueltán, through the permanent presence of federal security forces to prevent new armed attacks.
Urgent titling of the Communal Lands, for the federal government of Mexico to assume its historic responsibility and definitively title the communal lands of San Lorenzo de Azqueltán.
Dismantling of the network of impunity that protects the murderers, invaders, and caciques responsible for dispossession, violence, and death.
Respectfully
December 2025
Because our struggle is for life,
For memory and for the communal land.
Because Marcos lives in every step we take.
Autonomous Indigenous Community of San Lorenzo de Azqueltán
National Indigenous Congress
The National Indigenous Congress denounces the murder of Marcos Aguilar Rojas, from the Indigenous community of San Lorenzo de Azqueltán
November 26, 2025
We denounce with indignation, rage, and deep concern the murder of our comrade Marcos Aguilar Rojas, agrarian representative of the community of San Lorenzo de Azqueltán, as well as the gunshot wounds inflicted on his brother Gabriel Aguilar Rojas, delegate of the National Indigenous Congress.
The attack was carried out on November 26, 2025, by the assailants Esteban Aguilar Herrera, Manuel Aguilar Herrera, José Aguilar Herrera, Victor Hugo Pérez, Favio Flores Sánchez, and Abraham Pérez, all of whom are linked to the local caciques–or political bosses–and small landowners of the municipality of Villa Guerrero, Jalisco. They fled in a gray car toward either Villa Guerrero or Mezquitic.
The cowardly attack occurred on the communal land of El Caracol, a territory that the Azqueltán community has collectively defended against previous attempts at dispossession by these same individuals, who have acted under the protection of the systematic impunity granted to them by the Jalisco State Judiciary and Prosecutor’s Office. These institutions have repeatedly protected those who violate, threaten, and attack the Indigenous community, deepening the violence through their omission, silence, and complicity.
We hold the federal government responsible for denying agrarian recognition to the Indigenous community of Azqueltán; the government of the state of Jalisco for the impunity it guarantees to the criminals who have historically attacked the community; and we hold directly responsible the murderers Manuel and Esteban Aguilar Herrera and Victor Hugo Pérez, whose acts form part of a permanent strategy of dispossession and aggression against native peoples.
Today, as the National Indigenous Congress, we declare loud and clear: the violence against Azqueltán is not an isolated incident, but part of a national pattern in which power—whether governmental, economic, or criminal—attacks Indigenous communities when they defend their territory and their lives. We will not accept that the murder of our comrade goes unpunished, nor will we allow the dignity of Azqueltán to be trampled upon by the interests of local bosses, corporations, governments, or organized crime.
We demand full justice, immediate punishment for those materially and intellectually responsible, and a real guarantee of security for the community of San Lorenzo de Azqueltán.
From the rage and pain that we make our own, we embrace the community and its family.
Never again a Mexico without us!
National Indigenous Congress
