About thirty Tzeltal indigenous families from a small town in Chiapas, in southern Mexico, denounce threats from an armed criminal group that forced them to leave their homes after they won the lottery draw known as
El airplane presidencia
l.
The families, who live in the municipality of Ocosingo and are part of the José María Morelos y Pavón school community,
say they have been forced to leave their homes due to intimidation by the Los Petules criminal group
, who have insisted that they spend the prize money (20 million pesos, about $ 950,000) to buy firearms from them.
"We do not agree," said one of the spokesmen of the neighborhood group to the information website BBC Mundo during a protest.
Families fear being killed by the criminal group.
View of lottery tickets depicting the luxurious presidential plane in Mexico City Pedro Pardo / AFP via Getty Images
This ordeal began on September 15, 2020, when it was announced that they were the winners of the raffle that the current president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, organized to get rid of the plane used by his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto.
This aircraft is considered by AMLO as
one of the greatest symbols of luxury and waste of the past Administration.
Last March, the parents of the school began work on the building with part of the money.
The rest of the prize was to be invested in improving the living conditions of all.
But as soon as they started work, they say, they began to receive violent threats from Los Petules.
One of the neighbors
was injured by bullets
from men sent by the armed group to agree to his claim, the aforementioned media reports.
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"We left our community due to threats with high-caliber firearms," said Melecio López, one of the spokespersons.
Marcelo Santiz, another of the neighbors, added: "
We lost more than 250 head of cattle
, houses, refrigerators, crops of corn, beans and farmyard animals and they took away our bank card, losing the right to all government benefits."
A neglected complaint
The residents
filed a complaint with the
Chiapas Indigenous Justice
Prosecutor's Office
and with the State Secretary of Government, but they assure that so far they have not been given any solution.
They add that, until Los Petules are disarmed, they will not be able to return to their homes, of which they have been away for a month, hiding in different places and fearing to be located.
Thus, they ask the Chiapas authorities
and the president himself for help to help them end this nightmare.
The newspaper El Universal de México reported that Los Petules, whose objective is to attack nearby communities and seize hectares of land, were accused a few days ago by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the National Front of Struggle for Socialism ( FNLS) to attack their bases in the area.