For over a decade, the Mazatecan community of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón in the state of Oaxaca has faced persecution by the family of Manuel Zepeda, the former municipal president. Zepeda, the father of Elisa Zepeda Lagunes—a current state legislator for MORENA, Mexico’s ruling party—took power in the majority Indigenous community in 2011 as the first municipal president backed by a political party. He immediately set about using his power to enrich himself and, in the process, destroy the community’s natural resources, through the expansion of his business extracting gravel and sand from the community’s river.
When members of the local assembly—the traditional communal self-governance institution—attempted to stop him more than a decade ago, they were subjected to a vicious campaign of political persecution. In 2014, twenty-one community members were imprisoned under charges that judges ultimately discarded as unfounded. The remaining political prisoners were freed last year, thanks to a long fight by their families in the streets and the courts.
It seemed like they had finally overcome their years of criminalization. But this March, a judge in Oaxaca reactivated 200 arrest warrants against 56 community members for charges previously dismissed by the courts. These warrants, the ongoing displacement of local community members, and the role of local officials with ties to the country’s ruling party have cast a shadow over a community that has spent more than a decade fighting for its survival.
The re-filing of these bogus charges against community members sends a clear message, according to Argelia Betanzos. An Indigenous defender and the daughter of two teachers who are currently being targeted by the persecution campaign, Betanzos sees the charges as an attempt to “diminish our strength and distract us with a new defense.” What the state wants, Betanzos told NACLA, is to “impede Eloxochitlán from achieving complete freedom.”
The community’s steadfastness has already achieved results.
The community’s steadfastness has already achieved results. On July 11, the charges against one of the 56 were dropped. Even still, the struggle ahead is long, and the town remains under constant intimidation by the police and the military. In the face of immense obstacles, community members are drawing inspiration from their town’s most famous native son: Ricardo Flores Magón, the anarchist and revolutionary who a century ago gave voice to the communal struggle for land and self-determination.
A Struggle for Autonomy
The Mazatecan people traditionally elect their authorities in community assemblies through an Indigenous self-governance model known in Mexico as “uses and customs.” The right of Indigenous peoples to choose their representatives and governance structures is guaranteed in the second article of the Mexican constitution and the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, which Mexico ratified in September 1990. But, starting in the early 1990s, political parties came to the town seeking votes for federal and state elections, seeking to infiltrate the municipality’s governance, manipulating the community’s traditional processes of choosing their authorities through vote-buying.
In 2011, after decades of local communal rule, Manuel Zepeda won the municipal presidency in Eloxochitlán. A retired teacher who had recently started a business selling sand and gravel extracted from the riverbed, Zepeda used his newfound power to expand his enterprise.
“They started to industrialize their company: a gravel crusher, dumptrucks, new trucks, cars, a whole company that two, three years before didn’t exist. But, starting in the first year of their government, they began accumulating goods,” recalled Alfredo Bolaños, a member of the community assembly.
In 2014, at the end of Zepeda’s term, the community elected Bolaños as the new municipal president. He hoped to reunify the town, but Zepeda’s backlash came quickly. In August of that year, a message from the capital indicated possible corruption by the previous administration: the High Auditor of the State of Oaxaca requested that the town authorities clarify the use of 21 million pesos that Zepeda never accounted for. Several days before the deadline to turn over the proof, Zepeda took over Eloxochitlán’s municipal palace with a group of armed men, throwing out Bolaños and his team.
“The saddest part is that they only let us govern for 10 months and 24 days, because on November 24, these cacique groups took over the presidency,” Bolaños told NACLA, referring to the day when he was violently thrown out of his community governance role.
“We moved to an alternative office. We worked there for 20 days, until they imprisoned us on December 14, 2014. That’s where it all ended,” Bolaños added. That day, despite the unrest in the town, the community assembly held a meeting. When the population gathered in the community square, Zepeda’s armed men, who had been guarding the palace, fired on them.
Several people were seriously injured, including a child whose head was grazed by a bullet. In the face of the attack, the community erected barricades to defend themselves and repel the armed men. Thanks to their greater numbers, the community managed to thwart the attack and take one of the shooters, Manuel Zepeda’s son, into the custody of a group of traditional authorities. They handed him over to the prosecutor’s office in the nearby city of Huautla de Jiménez, where another group took the other wounded to receive medical attention.
That night, the persecution and fabrication began. Both those wounded and the traditional authorities were arrested and taken to prison in the following days without a warrant. They were accused of murdering Manuel Zepeda’s son and attempting to murder Elisa Zepeda and her mother. They were also charged with arson and another murder.
A Fight for Freedom
“The state used the images of smoke and fire to say that there was a massacre that day, but it’s false,” said Argelia. She has led the community’s legal defense over the course of the last decade.
The Zepeda family’s political power shielded it from accountability. Elisa Zepeda, Manuel’s daughter, accused community members of attempting to kill her; she positioned herself in the media as a survivor of feminicide and activist for Indigenous rights, using the platform to boost her political career and ensure her impunity.
In 2021, with their relatives imprisoned by what they deemed to be a corrupt judicial system, the women of Eloxochitlán took action. They organized the Mazatecas por la Libertad (Mazatecas for Freedom) collective and began a two-year protest camp on the Mexico City sidewalk outside the institution that oversees the country’s judicial system to demand the freedom of their spouses, brothers, and sons—all the remaining political prisoners were men. Eventually, their dedication and constant filing of appeals and injunctions led to the release of the prisoners.
The community had painstakingly proven its innocence before the justice system. “Ten years later, all accusations have been legally refuted. We have won acquittals on all charges, without exception,” says Argelia Betanzos. “We can confirm that on December 14, 2014, there were no deaths here in Eloxochitlán. Nor is there evidence of any attempt to harm or take the lives of women.”
Even still, the community found out about new arrest warrants on March 31 of this year. The new warrants are for charges from December 2014—including arson and robbery—that local, state, and federal judges have already discarded as unfounded in seven different judicial processes.
In response to the new wave of persecution, the community of Eloxochitlán hosted human rights activists and journalists for a civil observation mission from June 20 to 22. The presence of outside observers did not stop the intimidation campaign. Locals identified several trucks with tinted windows—belonging to the Zepeda family and people close to them—that circled the town.
Those facing the possibility of arrest have been forced into hiding.
Those facing the possibility of arrest have been forced into hiding. “Since these orders came out, they shut themselves away. It’s really complicated because what are we going to eat? They’re afraid that someone could show up and arrest them again,” said Martha Betanzos, an elderly woman in the community who also has an arrest warrant.
One of her sons, the photojournalist David Peralta, was the victim of an attempted murder by Manuel Zepeda, the local politician who has spearheaded the persecution of the community. On April 3 of this year, as Peralta attempted to photograph the damage to the riverbed caused by the Zepedas’ gravel and sand extraction, Zepeda attempted to run him over with a truck, and one of his employees robbed Peralta’s camera.
The attack on the young photojournalist revealed to the public eye the true reason behind the persecution of the Mazatecans. In the words of Argelia Betanzos, it was “a clear message to stop a free Eloxochitlán from denouncing the ecocide being committed in the river.”
The Legacy of Flores Magón
In Eloxochilán’s municipal plaza, a statue of Ricardo Flores Magón immortalizes the town’s celebrated anarchist son. His memory is present not only in the name of the municipality, but also among its inhabitants. They find echoes of their story in the life of Flores Magón, who was imprisoned in Mexico and the United States for fighting against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz in the first half of the 20th century.
“He went through everything we went through. His imprisonment was longer; it lasted many years, and the worst of all is that he died in prison. Perhaps his body died, but his ideals persist,” Alfredo Bolaños told NACLA. “What we can do to honor the ideals of Ricardo Flores Magón is stay united [and] maintain our economy [and] uses and customs against these powers. No government can defeat us if the people are united.”
In the coming weeks, the legal process to defeat the 200 arrest warrants will begin. In the courts, the Mazatecans will try to prove that their charges lack evidence and that their statutes of limitations have expired. In the streets, they will demand a total end to their persecution. They will confront a new judicial system that was recently birthed with the country’s first election of judges, ministers, and magistrates. As a result, after 170 years, Mexico once again has an Indigenous president of the Supreme Court.
Madeleine Wattenbarger is a journalist and translator in Mexico City. She is a member of the Cooperativa de Periodismo.
Axel Hernández is a documentary filmmaker, photojournalist, and reporter, a member of the Ojos de Perro Contra la Impunidad collective, and the Cooperativa de Periodismo. His work is focused on documenting processes of collective resistance, including land defense and the search for disappeared people.