Juan Medina liked very much to participate in the organization of the festival that year after year commemorates the recovery of land in the community of Santa María Ostula. It is an important commemoration, because being a Nahua indigenous community, everything is always against it: racism, prejudice, the interests of big capital, the invasive and violent presence of criminal groups, political parties, the disease of ambition and the power, and colonialist history. All against.
But one day everything changed and the balance tipped in favor of the community. On June 29, 2009, thousands of people participated in the most relevant social process of the last decades in the region. And for this reason Juan liked being part of this party, he remembered his own participation in that event at the same time that he endorsed his commitment to the defense of the territory.
But this year, on the 14th anniversary of the recovery, Juan was not present, at least not in person, although he was in spirit, in example and in anger. He was assassinated on April 14, 2023 for fulfilling the functions that the community entrusted to him throughout 2022 as Head of Tenure: keeping order in his community.
In December 2022, shortly before leaving his position as a civil authority, he arrested a person who tried to cross part of the territory of Ostula with a truck full of sacks full of marijuana.
Currently, the transfer of this plant is illegal in the community of Ostula, so Juan, supported by members of the Community Guard, arrested this person? Originally from the neighboring town of Salitre de Estopila? to the confiscation of the sacks and their detention.
Juan's murderer, believing that he was immune to the laws of Ostula, emanating from a Nahua people, was upset by this arrest and vowed to kill him as revenge. Months later, when Juan accompanied his wife to a food sale during a party in the same Salitre de Estopila, a man unloaded an AK-47 assault rifle at him. The party ended at that moment and the people who witnessed this crime confirmed who the murderer had been. Juan's wife witnessed his murder and this caused her enormous trauma.
His spirit remains
On June 29, 2023, during the commemorative act there were some participations of different invited people, among them the current authorities of Ostula, who requested a minute of silence for the 39 people murdered and the 5 people disappeared as a result of the conflict. agriculture and the defense of the territory.
It shouldn't have happened, but Juan's name was read on the list, read by one of his closest friends. His sister Socorro, one of the first women to hold positions of authority in the community, was very forceful when referring to the murder of her brother: «Me and my family want justice for the death of my brother. We have given all the elements and filed the corresponding complaint, but the murderer is still free and there is no authority to persecute him.
This year has once again been a very hard year for Ostula, after spending several years in calm, the violence generated by the group known as the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel ?CJNG? it has claimed more lives.
On January 12, Isaul Nemesio Zambrano, Miguel Estrada Reyes and Rolando Magno Zambrano, 3 members of the Community Guard, were killed by a CJNG cell in an attack carried out at a surveillance post established on the borders of the territory of Ostula and the municipal seat of Aquila.
Since this criminal group allied with the Ternium mining company to try to expand the exploitation facilities, the attacks against the community guards and community groups that are still active in the highlands and coast have increased.
At certain strategic points, the CJNG has begun to use drone bombardments of C4 plastic explosive more frequently, and this turns the region into a battlefront that only remains pacified thanks to the Ostula community and the fact that it held on to let their territory become the stage for mega projects and Ternium's mining yard.
Juan's spirit remains in the community on this anniversary, the example of the guards who lost their lives is in the fury with which he marched off to commemorate the land reclamation. And the community hopes that the list of people killed for defending the territory never grows longer, because for Ostula, it is about the irreparable loss of men and women who have made this territory a dignified and peaceful place to live.
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