We reject any attempt to minimize these events as isolated cases. (…) We urgently call on the authorities to respond firmly and restore order and the rule of law.”
On October 20, 2024, two hooded individuals on a motorcycle shot Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez, a Tsotsil Mayan indigenous person, while he was in his truck, after having officiated mass at the Cuxtitali Church in San Cristóbal de las Casas. He was traveling alone and without an escort when he was shot several times, resulting in his immediate death. This murder took the life of a man of God who dedicated his life to promoting peace, defending land and territory, and fighting violence through civil and peaceful resistance. Father Marcelo led the Catholic movement of the Simojovel People of Faith; he organized large peaceful pilgrimages together with the most vulnerable sectors, with the aim of promoting and advocating for peace in the state. He supported various organizations and groups that defended the rights of indigenous peoples, always highlighting the imperative need for respect for their autonomy, religious freedom, and collective rights; He denounced on countless occasions the threats of dispossession by megaprojects and denounced the poverty in which the economic system kept these communities.
In 2020, Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez was nominated for the prestigious Per Anger Award, given by the Swedish government, for his outstanding work in defending the rights of indigenous peoples in Chiapas. In 2021, he faced an intense campaign of defamation and threats through social media, as well as acts of illegal surveillance and public attacks promoted by the elected mayor of Pantelhó, Chiapas.
In 2022, the State Attorney General's Office issued an arrest warrant against him, accusing him of crimes that he denied having committed. Although the warrant was never executed, this fact revealed the use of criminal law for the purposes of criminalization and discrediting a human rights defender. Despite warnings from various organizations about the risk he was running, the authorities did not create a safe environment for Father Marcelo to continue exercising his right to defend human rights.
Since 2015, Father Marcelo has been the beneficiary of precautionary measures from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) due to constant death threats, intimidation and attacks. However, between 2023 and 2024, the Swedish Movement for Reconciliation (SweFOR) documented 200 security incidents against him, which showed the serious danger to which he was exposed.
On September 13, 2024, he led his last pilgrimage for peace in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, with the participation of more than 10,000 people who demanded an end to violence in the state. The murder of Father Marcelo occurs in a context of increasing violence against human rights defenders in Chiapas. Between 2017 and 2024, the UN-DH recorded at least 134 murders of defenders in Mexico, allegedly related to their work, and in 2024, seven more cases have already been documented.
It is worrying and regrettable that the Mexican State has not provided sufficient precautionary measures to protect and prevent the murder of Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez, as ordered by the IACHR, despite the recurrent and widely known risks he faced. The State should have complied with and implemented the precautionary measures ordered by the IACHR, aimed at safeguarding the life and integrity of all human rights defenders in Mexico. It is also regrettable that, in this case as in many others, the Mexican State did not guarantee Father Marcelo his right to defend human rights, recognized and based on various national and international legal instruments.
The Minerva Bello Center for the Rights of Victims of Violence, convinced of the need to reiterate its strong call to the authorities to implement a comprehensive public policy for the protection of human rights defenders, which must give priority to the exercise and full respect of the rights enshrined in international instruments, has decided to raise its voice and approach both the family and the diocese of SCLC to support them in their demand that the Mexican authorities urgently, exhaustively and impartially investigate the murder of Father Marcelo, to clarify the material and intellectual authors, motives and real circumstances of what happened, and that those responsible be brought before a competent, independent, fair and impartial court, and that the penal, civil and/or administrative sanctions provided for by law be applied to them.
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