Hi Bill,
To my understanding the killers came from Nueva Palestina. These people aren't Lacandones but Choles and Tzeltales. Earlier reports on this region indicate that the state goverment wants to create a new municipality of which Nueva Palestina would be the municipal capital. Earlier problems were reported by the Zapatista autonomous municipal council of Ricardo Flores Magon:

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/1999/amc_magon_july.html

We can only wait for more information to come out.

This Nov. 13 communique from Maderas del Pueblo (online at Chiapas95) is worded ambiguously:

At dawn on Nov. 13, in the northeast portion of the so-called Zona Lacandona (within the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve) an armed aggression was carried out, perpetrated by tens of colonists [subcomuneros] from Nueva Palestina and Frontera Corozal–members of the so-called "Lacandon Community"-against the Tzeltal and Col families the settlement Viejo Velasco Suarez.

So the perpetrators were "subcomuneros" (presumably not indigenous Lacandones), yet part of the "so-called 'Lacandon Community'" (a very suspicious construction–smelling like an attempt to deny that the Lacandones are truly indigenous).

Anyone have further information?

An update from Narco News:

The first wave, of 40 attackers, came dressed as civilians armed with machete swords and sticks, shouting insults at the families of Viejo Velasco. The paramilitary nature of the attackers is underscored by the fact that they were followed by a larger second wave of two hundred attackers: many dressed in official police uniforms, others in black uniforms, they carried firearms exclusively allowed the Armed Forces and police agencies (semi-automatic M-16 and R-15 weapons, .22 caliber rifles plus shotguns). The attackers came from the nearby community of Nueva Palestina, at around 6 a.m. on Monday. Immediately after the initial attack, an unidentified helicopter flew overhead, circling the community. It was not until 10 a.m. that other helicopters, one from the Attorney General's office and three from the state police, landed in the community.

The Nov. 14 bulletin from the Fray Bartoleme de Las Casas Human Rights Center counts 13 dead: seven women, four men and two minors. It blames the attack on presumed comuneros from Palestina, and states that the Viejo Velasco residents returned fire. It says the dead are from both sides, and that there an "undetermined number" of wounded.

An "Urgent Action" alert from Amnesty International, Nov. 16:

Urgent Action: fear for safety for the members of the community of Viejo Velasco, Chiapas

In the early morning of 13 November the indigenous community of Viejo
Velasco Suarez, Chiapas State, was attacked by over 200 armed individuals, many of whom were wearing security force clothing. Two men died and a woman was raped and killed during the attack. Two people from Viejo Velasco are also being held hostage in the nearby community of Nueva Palestina and are at risk of being beaten or killed in retaliation for two attackers who died during the confrontation and one who was injured. Two other men remain missing, and 39 people are displaced.

About 40 individuals in civilian clothes and armed with machetes and bats first arrived in Viejo Velasco Suarez from Nueva Palestina on 13 November. About 200 individuals followed soon after, armed with high calibre firearms usually commissioned by the military. Some reportedly wore military clothes, some wore uniforms of the State Police (Policia Sectorial) and others wore balaclavas.

On 14 November Diego Arcos Meneses, a resident of a nearby community, was walking near the site of the attack when he was threatened and detained by agents of the Attorney of the Selva Region (Fiscalia Regional, Zona Selva). Diego Arcos Meneses was reportedly forced to load the body of a dead woman onto the agents' helicopter before being taken by them to the office of the Prosecutor in Palenque to be questioned as a witness to the attack in Viejo Velasco Suarez.

Diego Arcos Meneses, who does not speak Spanish very well and who cannot read Spanish, gave testimony verbally in Spanish and was not provided with interpretation. He refused to sign the written version of his testimony because he could not confirm its accuracy. As a result, he was reportedly beaten severely and was put into preventive custody.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Conflicts around land issues in the Selva Lacandona, Chiapas State, have brought violence to indigenous communities for decades. Following an agreement in 2005, the Federal and State government committed to regularize the land rights of 28 communities, including that of Viejo Velasco Suarez. However, since April 2006, the local government has started a process of forced evictions and relocations, allegedly with the support of pro-government militia groups and individuals from communities, such as Nueva Palestina. Local human rights organisations, such as Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolome de las Casas, have been documenting the threats and harassment in Chiapas and alerting the Federal and State authorities when incidents such as the attack in Viejo Velasco might happen.

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, in Spanish or your own language:
- urging the authorities to charge Diego Arcos Meneses with a recognisably criminal offence or to release him immediately and to investigate his reported beating and arbitrary arrest on 14 November;
- calling on the authorities to ensure the safety of the displaced inhabitants of Viejo Velasco Suarez, following the attack of 13 November by a group of armed individuals, some of whom wore security forces clothing;
- calling on the authorities to take emergency measures to establish the whereabouts of those who seem to be missing, and to ensure the safe release of those reportedly held hostage in Nueva Palestina;
- calling on the authorities to identify without delay those who were killed and to ensure a full, prompt and impartial forensic examination and secure protection of all evidence;
- calling for a full, prompt and impartial investigation into the violent confrontation of 13 November, in particular reports of official involvement, with the results to be made public and those responsible brought to justice. [addresses online]

An analysis by the Fray Bartoleme Human Rights Center (Frayba), cited by APRO Nov. 16, calls the incident a "premediated attack" which may signal a resurgence of army-backed paramilitary violence as a "counterinsurgency strategy against the EZLN." It states that residents have named the group behind the attack as the PRI-affiliated Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Campesino Rights (OPDDIC), led by Pedro Chulin Jimenez, who is also named as leader of the paramilitar Indigenous Revolutionary Anti-Zapatista Movement (MIRA).

A Nov. 14 EFE account puts the number of dead at four, and in a Nov. 15 statement, Frayba admits initial reports of 14 dead may have been overstated.

El Universal reported Nov. 16 that some 400 state police agents have been dispatched the Lacandon Selva. Agens of the State Fiscalia General (FGE) landed in two helicopters at the Lacandon village of Lacanja Chansayab, where they reportedly confirmed that three residents of Viejo Velasco Suarez are being held there as "hostages." APRO reported Nov. 15 that Viejo Velasco is effectively surrounded by state police.

El Universal also reported Nov. 16 claims by Chiapas state prosecutor Mariano Herran Salvatti that the attack was retaliation for the kidnapping of five Lacandon men by the campesino organization Xinich. The five men were later liberated.

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Nov. 19:

At least four people were killed in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas when 200-300 armed residents of the Nueva Palestina community attacked the 17 families who live in the small village of Viejo Velasco Suarez on Nov. 13. Both communities are in Ocosingo municipality, on the edge of the Montes Azules preserve region near the border with Guatemala, and both populations are indigenous, mostly from the Chol and Tzeltal groups.

Three of the dead were Viejo Velasco residents: Filemon Benitez Perez; his uncle, Antonio Mayor Benitez Perez; and Maria Nunez Gonzalez, who was six months pregnant, according to the state attorney general's office. One Nueva Palestina resident, Vicente Perez Cruz, died of injuries on Nov. 14 in a hospital in Palenque. Four Viejo Velasco residents were reported disappeared: Miguel Moreno Montejo, Mariano Perez Guzman, Pedro Nunez Perez and Petrona Nunez Gonzalez, the sister of Maria Nunez Gonzalez.

Petrona Nunez was reportedly taken to Nueva Palestina after the Nov. 13 attack and was released on Nov. 14. On Nov. 16 she filed a formal complaint charging that Nueva Palestina residents had kidnapped her along with Pedro Nunez Perez, who was her father, and Miguel Moreno, and that they killed the two men near El Paraiso community. As of Nov. 18 police had not been able to find any of the bodies of the disappeared.

Nueva Palestina and Viejo Velasco residents had a long-standing land dispute, but human rights groups suggest that the violence was at least partly political. Nueva Palestina is dominated by members of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Mexico's former ruling party, and the victims in Viejo Velasco supported either the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) or the Xi'nich ("Ant" in Chol) grassroots movement. Viejo Velasco residents reported that some of the attackers were wearing police or other uniforms and carrying high-caliber rifles.

The Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center charged that the attack was similar to ones carried out from 1995 to 2000 by paramilitaries as part of a counterinsurgency strategy against the EZLN. The center noted that retired major general Luis Mucel Luna is now heading a state police unit; he holds a degree from the National Defense College in national security administration and did post-graduate studies at the Inter-American Defense College at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington, DC. (La Jornada, Nov. 15, 16, 17, 18; Narco News, Nov. 17)

From La Jornada, Nov. 19:

The indigenous who were attacked in the community of Viejo Velasco Suarez on Monday are in their majority from the support base of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), and do not belong to the Xinich organization, the group asserted.

The group rejected declarations by state prosecutor Mariano Herran
Salvatti, who asserted that residents of Viejo Velasco belonged to Xinich and are those responsible for the violent acts in which four people lost their lives, according to state authorities.

"We do not clarify this to appear cowardly or afraid of the issue, but so that the truth will be known," said a statement released this afternoon.

Rejecting any responsibility for the acts, Xinich said that for state and federal authorities "It is easier to cast the blame on the first fool they can find, than to recognize their own incapacity to govern and find solutions to the social problems at the root [of the violence]."

The stated that "every time [the authorities] do not want to confront a large organization called the EZLN, they prefer to attack a small organization like Xinich. To our understanding, señor governor, señor prosecutor, señor secretary of Agrarian Reform, this is not dignified or honest. Nor is it courageous...

"Our dignified and honest reponse to these accusations...is that we, as an organization, have no responsibility in the bloody acts at Viejo Velasco, neither as aggressors nor as direct victims. The attacked are our indigenous brothers, but, as an organization, they are support bases of the EZLN, and the aggressors, it is clear, were from Palestina or the Lacandon Community."