The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, defined this Monday as a “probable set-up” the checkpoint with which several hooded men forced the official candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, to stop in Chiapas on Sunday and have asked him to, in case to win the presidential election, address the climate of violence and insecurity that plagues the Chiapas border with Central America. During his morning conference, the president pointed directly to the Latinus media outlet as being responsible for forcing the situation. It was the only newspaper that covered the vehicle’s arrest.
In the video uploaded to social networks, several hooded men can be seen stopping the convoy of the candidate of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) in the municipality of Motozintla, near the border with Guatemala. The protesters asked her to remember the violence-stricken mountains of Chiapas when she was president. The only microphone that picked up the voices was Latinus’s. The president has dwelled on this detail to define the meeting as a montage. “We already know that it is very likely that it is propaganda because the person who is going to make a statement is neither hooded nor recording,” the president said.
The fact that the protesters had their faces covered was also a reason for the president to delegitimize the protest. “It is very likely that it is a setup. Why hooded? If someone has a complaint, why are they going to wear a hood,” he said. To affirm his position regarding the alleged setup, he stated that people stop him on the roads to complain, they do so “without covering their faces.”
López Obrador has admitted that Chiapas is being affected by disputes between criminal groups. “It is very strange what happened there in Motozintla, Chiapas, and indeed, there are groups that are fighting, but this is something very special,” he said.
The hypothesis of an alleged montage has been launched by Sheinbaum herself, who after the blockade declared that the incident seemed “very strange” to her, due to the language of the subjects. According to her story, the hooded men asked her, if she won the June 2 election, to attend to the Chiapas border with Central America, a trench of insecurity and violence for control of the migrant route and natural resources.
The protesters declared that their protest was not against the candidate or the current Morena Government. “Remember the poor people, that’s all we want to tell you, we are not against the Government, keep that in your mind, we are not against you,” explained one of the hooded men. The group’s fear was that Motozintla would become an area controlled by criminal groups. “We do not want Motozintla to be another disaster like Comalapa, we want you, when you are in the presidency, to do us a favor by cleaning up that stretch to Comalapa,” they declared.
The southern state is involved in a serious crisis of violence caused by the disputes between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which are fighting over a jungle strip near the border with Guatemala. The clashes have caused civilian casualties and the displacement of thousands of people who have fled their towns and communities.
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