Massacre at Acteal

by Lorena Cassady

Title

Massacre at Acteal

Artist

Lorena Cassady

Medium

Photograph - Photograph

Description

I visited Acteal in 2006 with my friend and guide, Marco (on the right), with two large suitcases stuffed with warm clothing for children that I had brought from the Mexican immigrant children of Salinas, California. The principle of the school in Salinas had given me the clothes from two bins of "Lost and Found" clothing collected from the past two years. I never could have afforded to bring these two big suitcases to Chiapas, Mexico except that the extra baggage costs in 2006 were much less than they are today.

The man on the left was a member of the town council which convened to allow us entry into the village. Outsiders should never seek to enter indigenous land without permission. I found out later that during the time of our visit, the Mexican Government had explicitly forbidden outsiders and press to enter this territory.

The murder of 45 mostly women and children took place in this simple church. The men with machine guns didn't even have to enter this rickety structure -- they shot from the outside. Inside the church the sunlight came in from the hundreds of bullet holes in the walls and the tin ceiling,

"The Acteal massacre was a massacre of 45 people attending a prayer meeting of [Catholic] indigenous townspeople, including a number of children and pregnant women, who were members of the pacifist group Las Abejas ("The Bees"), in the small village of Acteal in the municipality of Chenalhó, in the Mexican state of Chiapas. Right-wing paramilitary group Máscara Roja murdered the victims on December 22, 1997. The Government of Mexico first admitted responsibility for the massacre in September 2020." -- Wikipedia

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March 28th, 2023

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