This article was published on Tuesday 22 October in El Confidencial. Being a means of payment, only subscribers could read it. Days later, these words served as a public tribute to a brave man who was murdered for raising his voice and for whom I professed admiration and affection.. They always wanted to kill him, he always knew. And he decided not to change because he preferred to die than to be complicit in his silence of barbarism..
Replica of the text
“They want to kill Father Marcelo. How they wanted to kill him 2015, when we met him in his parish of Simojovel, in Los Altos de Chiapas, Mexico…". This is how the article published in The Confidential the 28 August 2021. and on monday 20 October 2024, finally, They killed Father Marcelo.
He was shot eight times when he was leaving mass.. They killed a brave man, to a fighter for peace and human rights, what did I know, That's what he always told me, that they wanted to finish him off. Until they did. Bastard world, forgive the very Mexican expression, in which death sentences are carried out out loud.
There are men who know that they are going to die, as such, they are going to die, because the inaction of the rest, authorities who beat themselves on the chest of the country, they turn them into simple suicides. And so they die, with the feeling that by not running, by having the courage to not stop raising your voice, they died alone because of him, for having conscience.
“This Sunday morning 20 October 2024, The Mayan priest Tsotsil was murdered, human rights defender, Marcelo Pérez Pérez, who for years dedicated himself to the fight for the lives of the people and to the construction of peace in Chiapas, as well as to denounce the violence that has been experienced for decades in the state, for which the Mexican government is responsible.", The Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center points out in an informative note. (CDHFBC).
He decided that he would climb to his heaven on foot, down the stairs, that the father didn't like shortcuts
Father Marcelo was the Word. In the Bible it is said that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.". The Mayan priest, deeply religious, he made his life that, verb, with which he denounced a criminal and miserable world that subjugated the inhabitants of a place so poor that the dead accumulated in the ravines were granted only the rank of corpses.. “The people are rising. The Church is rising. The three dioceses have united in the face of this avalanche of violence and unfortunately the Government not only does nothing but systematically denies the existence of violence and there are more and more deaths., there are displaced people and kidnappings”, said the parish priest in an interview 13 September in the middle of the umpteenth march in which he demanded an end to the violence. They were his last public words, one Sunday before they finally finished him off after plying his trade. He didn't lower his tone that day either., He never allowed himself that luxury., since he decided that he would climb to his heaven on foot, down the stairs, that the father didn't like shortcuts and elevators.
This is what he told me the first time I met him., back in 2015, when I approached his Parish of Simojovel. I read that a priest had stood before a cross and climbed and descended mountains with 15.000 neighbors behind in a lawless land. It was a four-day march in which the religious mobilized thousands of people fed up with living under the yoke of violence. He took them to the capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez, and for a few minutes he managed to get the forgotten hole that is Los Altos de Chiapas to have a spot on national television and newspapers.. And his powerful enemies did not like that., narcopoliticians, he called them, who put a price on his head: a million pesos. Do you know what can kill you?, the interpellated entonces. “Nos enteramos de algún intento de emboscada del que pude huir y varias veces hemos tenido persecuciones», he answered then to add later. “I refuse to have the protection that the Federal Police has offered me for three reasons: I would enjoy protection that the people do not have, I don't trust the police, They are all bought here by drug traffickers, and we are pacifists, I don't want anyone to die because of me, "I prefer to die".
Since then, several times we made stories together. About the lack of vaccines in the wrinkled shacks of its parishioners who were dying of poverty, about threats to cures like him who wore sandals and carried a first aid kit to mass, and about the amber and drug business that germinated hatred in its mountains. The last face-to-face talk was in 2018, when the same scenario that is happening now was repeated and that has cost him his life because of being nosy, for denouncing until his last breath that the poor and indigenous people of his lands were given birth to live dead. That report was published on this website.
The children cried from hunger or fear because shots rang out among the branches.
Then there were thousands of displaced people fleeing their homes due to a wave of violence in which drug traffickers and politicians subjugated thousands of residents.. There were camps scattered throughout the mountains in which hundreds of elderly, men, women and children lived under plastic sheets. Father Marcelo put us in contact with the CDHFBC and we managed to enter an area with roadblocks and paramilitary controls.. It was parishes like yours that took care of thousands of displaced people whose homes were burned. Weak and sad bodies lying on a floor of dust and stone. You couldn't hear anything, They barely spoke so they wouldn't be discovered, until the children cried from hunger or fear because shots rang out between the branches. “It is a consensual massacre. “The people deserve protection.”, the priest pointed out. And that was him, protection of a religious man who I never figured out if he wasn't afraid of dying or if he was more afraid of others dying and going to bed with the hollow conscience of not having done anything. I understood that the first thing worried him, but he was terrified of being an accomplice to that nothingness.
The last time we spoke on the phone was in 2021. He never stopped sending messages denouncing corruption, crimes and injustices. Then he received a direct death threat that he managed to record. I threatened him, and his family, and his parishioners. The audio was shocking. Because of impunity, the condescending tone, the diminutives, the crudeness, proverbs and syllogisms.
-I don't think it would be pleasant for him if I had to interrupt his celebration of mass or any traditional celebration here in the parish., and have to unleash a massacre inside her. Badly, leaving the heads of his faithful followers, of his parishioners, on the threshold of his beautiful and beautiful parish. I don't think it's necessary and I don't think it would be pleasant for him., or yes father?”, told him a voice that identified itself as a member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
leaving the heads of his faithful followers, of his parishioners, on the threshold of his beautiful and beautiful parish
-And then Father Marcelo, He limited himself to answering “What else does it mean?”? (…) “We always seek peace for the people.”.
-The tranquility and life of each of your loved ones depends on this call. (…) In these moments, Outside the parish there are two black suburban-type vans with eight of my best hitmen waiting for me and you to finish talking.. (…) If you do things right father, I don't have to predict the beautiful future of you or anyone of yours., but here in advance if you think this call is a game or a joke, I swear by the same God that you believe in and I believe that you are going to make the news tomorrow..
-Do you have anything else to say?, the priest answers.
-Can we solve this peacefully or do you want us to solve it violently??
-I don't have any problem.
(…)
-Do you want to have the CJNG as friends and protectors or do you want to have us as enemies or executioners??
-I have no enemies, I see them all as brothers. To all humanity.
-Beforehand, I'm going to tell you the situation: 'Flies don't enter a closed mouth'. You know well that in this type of tricks 'he who knows less lives longer', concludes the hitman.
And Father Marcelo, what did I know, That's how he confessed to me, that that was not another threat, he didn't shut up. could do it, could escape, He was able to stay in his parish with the chores of his rosaries and his candles without raising his voice, without denouncing so much nauseating wretch again, and holding on to that idea that everything that happens is somehow under the mantle of God. But, he kept the word given to his mirror and to his parishioners, and maintained his commitment to the community, with reporting, with being a verb comes so much filth.
And the murderer who was on the other end of that phone also fulfilled his. And the, or others like him, They killed Father Marcelo as everyone had known for years that it was going to happen without anyone doing anything. “Of course I know there are people who want to kill me. I have chosen to give my life for peace. “Peace is more important than my life”, he told me in 2021. And he died without that peace he longed for, without even a glimpse in the Highlands of Chiapas, a good man, a peaceful soldier of his God.
