Triqui Leader Executed in San Juan Copala

by Pedro Matias, Proceso

Heriberto Pazos Ortiz of the MULT, alleged
intellectual author of Santos Castro's murder.
Photo: Dimoru

Oaxaca, Oax., September 5 (apro)- Four armed men who are linked to the Movement for Triqui Unification and Struggle (MULT) and the Union for the Social Well-being of the Triqui Region (UBISORT) murdered the municipal agent of Agua Fría, Copala, Pedro Santos Castro, this past Sunday. [A municipal agent is similar to a mayor and is one of the highest elected positions in a town.]

The murder was denounced by Mariana Flores, the representative of the [Triqui] women and children who are in a protest encampment in Oaxaca City's main plaza.  Flores accused Heriberto Pazos Ortiz and Rufino Merino Zaragoza, leaders of MULT and MULT's Popular Unity Party respectively, as well as Pablo Guzmán Ramírez from UBISORT, of being the intellectual authors of the murder.

Including this new murder, there have been a total of 25 murders of members of the self-proclaimed autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala.

Mariana Flores said that the leader of Agua Fría was murdered in the presence of his wife Lucila Celestino de Jesús and his sister Angela Santos Castro, both of whom identified the men who killed Santos Castro.

The man's family members recognized the assailants of this murder as Emiliano Martínez Santos, Francisco Moreno Flores, Camilo Ramírez de Jesús, and Antonio Cruz García, aka "Toño Pájaro."

However, they believe that the intellectual authors are ex-congressman Rufino Merino Zaragoza and Heriberto Pazos Ortiz, from MULT, as well as Pablo Guzmán Ramírez from the UBISORT.

Flores, the representative of the 20 women and 25 children who are in self-imposed exile in Oaxaca City's town square in order to save their lives, insisted that it is obvious that Gov. Ulises Ruiz seeks to use his gunmen to do away with the autonomous municipality.

Translated by Kristin Bricker.