Chiapas: roads blocked to protest paramilitarism | World War 4 Report

13.11.15

Chiapas: roads blocked to protest paramilitarism | World War 4 Report: The murder followed contested municipal elections in Tila, in which the Mexican Green-Ecological Party (PVEM) took power in a vote assailed as tainted by Laklumal Ixim. The PVEM took 59 of the state's 122 municipalities in the race, in an unlikely alliance with elements of the old political machine of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that had ruled Chiapas for decades before being ousted in an upsurge from the left in 2000. Gov. Manuel Velasco Coello, in office since 2012, is also from the PVEM. Now reduced to a PRI satellite party, the PVEM is seen by Laklumal Ixim as a facade to re-consolidate the old machine under a new name. The organization's statement charged that the PVEM is "generating a climate of terror in Tila." (Chiapas Paralelo, Nov. 9; NoticiasNet.mx, Excelsior, July 27)