Villagers vow to return to ghostown in ruins in Oaxaca, Mexico

Woman looking at the ruins of a house in Cerro Metate, Mexico. Photo by Juana García. Used with her permission.

What was once a prosperous town with fertile lands and at least 15 families has become a place of silence, where only the birds sing. An arson fire caused many houses to collapse, while those that are still standing are riddled with bullet holes, and others are just walls.

At the end of March 2024, more than 25 homes were burned down. The drinking water distribution system, light poles, agaves, and the forest of the families of Cerro Metate, one of the towns in the municipality of San Juan Mixtepec, located in the South of Mexico, in Oaxaca, were also either burned or destroyed.

Abraham, a former resident of Cerro Metate, recounts the attack between sighs, while showing what is left of what was once his home:

Quemaron mi casa el que hice con mucho trabajo, lo construí con el dinero que conseguí en Estados Unidos, cuando regresé hice esta casita donde me pasé después, pero me tuve que salir porque a diario estaban disparando y así no se puede vivir, ahora quemaron todo. Cuando todo se calme, ¿dónde voy a vivir?

They burned down my house, which I worked hard to build with the money I earned in the United States. When I came back, I built this little house where I lived afterward. But I had to leave because there were gunshots every day and you can't live like that. Now they burned everything down. When everything calms down, where am I going to live?

Of the house that Abraham had built after working in the United States for six years, only ashes remain, along with some clay utensils and a metal door that stands overlooking what were once the homes of a dozen families.

The song of the wind is heard coming from the forest. It is a sunny day, about 35 people had gathered to participate in tequio community volunteer work that involves the participation of the entire town. This time they were cutting down trees burnt by the fire in an effort to restore electricity to the area.

Although Cerro Metate has become a ghost town, when there are tequios, former residents return and take turns working, while another group stands guard, watching the nearby conflict zone to warn the others if armed people are approaching.

That day, while they continued their work, bursts of gunfire could be heard in the distance — as if it were a war zone.

The violence, the result of years of political unrest, territory disputes, displacement, and crime, has brought chaos to this once-tranquil region.

Six kilometers away, residents from Santo Domingo Yosoñama, from another municipality, are claiming 1,700 hectares of land from Cerro Metate. The land dispute continues even though the case was settled in 1996 when the Unitary Agrarian Tribunal accredited the land to San Juan Mixtepec.

José Sánchez was displaced from Cerro Metate and sheltered in another community located about five kilometers away, where other families who fled like him are taking refuge. He told Global Voices:

Estamos cansados de esto, todos los días es así, hay días con más disparos y otros menos. Han sido 14 años de vivir en la incertidumbre, con miedo que nos vengan a balear, como lo han hecho. 

We are tired of this, it is like this every day, there are days with more gunshots and others with less. It has been 14 years of living in uncertainty, afraid that they will come and shoot us, as they have done before.

By the end of 2023, more than 380,000 people were forced to move nationwide, according to estimates by the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights (CMDPDH).

According to this Commission, both Chiapas and Oaxaca have the highest number of displaced Indigenous people in the country, both in terms of occurrences and number of people.

Daniel Márquez, CMDPDH internal displacement officer, said in an interview:

La mayoría de las formas de violencia están asociadas con armas de fuego. Entonces, hay esa proliferación de actores que tienen armas de una u otra forma. Con esto, hacen que haya un potencial riesgo de desplazamiento, a conflictos de larga data. En Oaxaca tienen mucha incidencia.

Most forms of violence are associated with firearms. So, there is this proliferation of actors who have weapons of one kind or another. With this, they create a potential risk of displacement, of long-standing conflicts. They affect Oaxaca a lot.

A man in the rubble of Cerro Metate, Mexico. Photo by Juana García. Used with permission.

14 years of displacement

Since 2010, residents and various media have documented the burning of more than 50 vehicles, more than 30 houses, almost 100 hectares of forest, and at least 28 murders in the municipality of San Juan Mixtepec. This means that dozens of families have been gradually displaced over the course of 14 years. Some went to live in the municipal capital of San Juan Mixtepec, others to Tlaxiaco, Santiago Juxtlahuaca, Huajuapan de León, the city of Oaxaca, and even to the United States.

Fourteen years ago, before the violence and displacement affected them, they and the residents of Yosoñama respected each other. However, they say that since Antorcha Campesina (Torch of the Peasantry, a political organization) arrived, the violence has worsened, and the people of Yosoñama began to invade the lands of Mixtepec more quickly.

Unlike other displaced communities in this area of ​​Oaxaca, Cerro Metate and Rancho Lucero have been gradually displaced for more than a decade. They organized tequios and guards. The people who accompany Abraham in a tequio say in unison:

Tenemos la esperanza de regresar algún día a Cerro Metate. Pueden corrernos, quemar nuestros cerros, pero no pueden borrar nuestras memorias y registros, porque acá nacimos, acá crecimos y de acá somos.

We hope to return to Cerro Metate one day. They can chase us away, burn our hills, but they cannot erase our memories and records, because we were born here, we grew up here, and we are from here.

Forced displacement has also affected other neighboring communities such as Rancho Lucero, Cuajilotes, Pueblo Viejo, and Río Azucena. For example, S. Suárez from Cuajilotes (who didn't provide his full name to avoid reprisal) decided to go with his family to live in his wife's village, although he returns to serve in the tequios and stand guard. Suárez says:

Nosotros somos los que estamos acá viendo cómo le hacemos para sobrevivir, cómo nos turnamos para hacer guardia, cómo sobrevivimos cada día. Antes salíamos a trabajar a Estados Unidos para mantener a nuestras familias, porque nunca nos llegan los programas de apoyo, pero ahora tampoco podemos salir porque estamos al pendiente de lo que pueda sucederles a nuestras familias.

We are the ones here figuring out how to survive, how to take turns on guard duty, how to survive each day. We used to go to work in the United States to support our families, because the [state] support programs never reached us, but now we can't leave because we are worried about what might happen to our families.

His father was killed in February 2013, and he says that since then, the Attorney General's Office of the State of Oaxaca has not informed him about the progress of the investigation, if there even is one. The fight to defend this territory has orphaned children, widowed women, and left parents without children.

In an interview, the authorities of San Juan Mixtepec have said that it is a conflict that affects the entire municipality. However, there are five communities that have been facing the bullets for 14 years, a conflict that has not stopped; on the contrary, it has worsened, leaving Cerro Metate and Rancho Lucero as ghost towns.

In 2011, José Sánchez was lent a house in Río Azucena and planned to ​​return to Cerro Metate soon, but 13 years have passed, and he is still away from his home. In March, his house was also burned down. In 2011 he fled as gunfire broke out. He states with a broken voice:

Estamos cansados, todos los días se escuchan disparos, todos los días nos turnamos para cuidar nuestro territorio, nuestro hogar y bosques, para que no se acerquen a adueñarse de las tierras. Nada es igual que antes.

We are tired, every day we hear gunshots, every day we take turns to protect our territory, our homes and forests, so that no one comes to take over our lands. Nothing is the same as before.

Photo of an abandoned house in Cerro Metate, Mexico. Photo by Juana García. Used with her permission.

The displaced families are begging for the violence in this area of ​​San Juan Mixtepec to stop, for justice to reach them, so that they can return to their homes, to Cerro Metate, to work their lands.

Since the conflict began, neither the families of Cerro Metate nor the others have received any humanitarian support from the governments for the violence they are experiencing. On the contrary, they have closed the schools in Pueblo Viejo where the children attended.

Start the conversation

Authors, please log in »

Guidelines

  • All comments are reviewed by a moderator. Do not submit your comment more than once or it may be identified as spam.
  • Please treat others with respect. Comments containing hate speech, obscenity, and personal attacks will not be approved.