Music: “Poblanas,” by the group La Surada, part of the jaranero contingent (more than 40 musicians who will play together, in a crowd, collectively). They will perform at the Teatro Metropólitan during the “Concert for an Embrace” (Concierto para un Abrazo), which will also feature Meme, Kevin Kaarl, Vivir Quintana, Ely Guerra, and Caifanes, on November 18. The concert aims to raise the funds—the money, the cash, the dough—to cover transportation for families searching for their missing loved ones. Ticketmaster will donate its commission to the same cause.
Images, editing, and production: Terci@s Compas Zapatistas

WE’RE GOING. WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT, WE’RE GOING.

Statement of denunciation by the COMMON GOVERNMENT OF THE 12 ZAPATISTA CARACOLES

November 1, 2026

Compañeras, compañeros, and compañeroas:
Siblings, sisters, and brothers:

In July of this year, we announced our intention to travel to Mexico City to meet with groups, collectives, and families who belong to no group, who search for their missing loved ones. Not to hold assemblies, not to create new networks or coordinating bodies, but to listen, group by group, family by family, to their stories and to the stories of those who are absent. And also, if they are willing to accept it, to embrace them with a hug sent by the Zapatista communities.

We designated Mexico City as the central meeting place so as to spare the families of those who are missing the exhaustion and expense that traveling all the way to Zapatista territory would entail.

Since then, the federal government, the state government of Chiapas, and various municipal governments have carried out a series of actions that not only violate human rights (not only those of Zapatistas, but also of members of political parties and those without party affiliation), but also contradict the rhetoric of peace, happiness, and well-being that they preach up there.

We will give you the details, but first we want to inform you that these are nothing but provocations intended to force us to cancel our trip at the end of this month, our stay in Mexico City during December and the first week of January 2027, and the visits that are being organized to Oaxaca, Veracruz, Puebla, Jalisco, and Querétaro during that same period.

So those up there, at the federal, state, and municipal levels, must understand that we are going (some of our people might are already be there) to Mexico City. We are going to meet with the families searching for their missing loved ones who want to and are able to meet with us in Mexico City, Veracruz, Puebla, Jalisco, Oaxaca, and Querétaro. We are going to listen to the stories of their pain; we are going to embrace them; we are going to carry their words in our shoulder bags; we are going to bring their stories back with us and preserve them so that they are not stained by oblivion and indifference.

Any provocation will be met with strength and mobilization. You must decide whether to accept this reality and be content with the fact that we will keep our word. Or you can continue with your foolishness (in which the entire federal and state cabinets, as well as the municipal administrations, are involved) and give our initiative a different character. We are not going to make a commotion, but we can.

1. In the ejido of La Culebra, in the municipality officially known as Ocosingo (governed by the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico), the harassment, threats, and imprisonment of families who are Zapatista support bases continue.

Those provoking the situation there are members of the Cartel of Mario Delgado, Mexico’s federal Secretary of Public Education. The main hitman is Eusebio Cruz Ruiz, who presents himself as a teacher and claims to receive direct orders from Mario Delgado.

They have now gone a step further by prohibiting everyone from going to the compañeros’ cooperative store, under threat of imprisonment. They have also decreed that any resident of that settlement or nearby communities who receives treatment at the Common’s clinic (which serves Zapatistas, members of political parties, and those without party affiliation) will be imprisoned and fined. Anyone who disobeys will be taken into custody.

We are not making this up. Here is the proof: (Click to enlarge the image.)

In addition to prohibiting freedom of movement, free trade, and access to healthcare, they are “respectfully” imprisoning and fining anyone who disobeys them—not only in the ejido itself, but throughout all the surrounding communities.

2. On what is known as the San Cristóbal–Palenque Highway, a federal government project, the National Guard, the State Police, the municipal police, and a landowner named Audamaro Oropeza Camacho have destroyed Common property on land recovered more than 32 years ago.

They tore down the signs indicating that this land was part of the Good Government Council and now belongs to the Common; they stole livestock belonging to the Common; and they deliberately destroyed cornfields and forests, with the support and approval of the municipal and state authorities of Chiapas.

Complaints have already been submitted to the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) several times. Frayba has in turn presented these complaints to federal and state authorities, but there has been no response whatsoever, either in words or in action.

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They are playing with fire. The embrace for the searching families is a civilian, peaceful initiative. It seeks confrontation with no one.

The simplest way to keep us from going to Mexico City is to satisfy the demands for truth and justice of those who have lost loved ones through unnatural causes. Then those searching families will tell us: “Don’t come anymore. We are satisfied.”

Bring thousands and tens of thousands of soldiers. Explain to the troops and to society that you are going to try to stop a mobilization whose purpose is to offer an embrace and listen to the pain of others. What we are going to do is called “empathy,” something that, evidently, you lack.

Whatever happens, say publicly that it will be done to satisfy one of Mario Delgado’s hitmen, so that a landowner, Audamaro Oropeza Camacho, can steal even more livestock and land from Indigenous Zapatistas, and to impose a highway that is rejected by all the Indigenous peoples of the area.

You have been warned. No one can claim they weren’t.

That is all.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés and ASSEMBLY OF COLLECTIVES OF ZAPATISTA AUTONOMOUS GOVERNMENTS (A.C.G.A.Z.).
COMMON GOVERNMENTS OF THE 12 ZAPATISTA CARACOLES.