Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84Plough Quarterly • Summer   Pedro H. Arriaga Alarcón, SJ, serves as a parish priest and episcopal vicar in the Diocese of San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico. Afew weeks after the massacre of forty- five Tzotzil indigenous in Chiapas, a memorial entitled An Open Wound was published. It included photos of each of the victims: babies in their mother’s arms, adolescents, adults, and elderly. There are twenty women, four of them pregnant; sixteen children; and nine men. Those of us who were close to them, living with the survivors in the following days, wept and prayed, left helpless by this genocide. We had been living in this violent atmo- sphere long before December 22, 1997, when the paramilitary forces attacked a prayer meeting beginning a three-day fast for peace in a Catholic church in Acteal. For three months there had been organized violence: house burnings and sporadic assassinations had forced ten thousand to flee their commun- ities. Fifteen days before, a dialogue had been opened in an effort to stop the escalating violence, but to no avail. Nineteen years ago this December, the world’s attention was briefly drawn to the mountainous highlands of Chiapas, Mexico’s poorest and southernmost state. Centuries of injustice had led to a brief armed uprising by the indigenous population in 1994. The ski- masked and bandoleered Zapatistas grabbed headlines and eventually negotiated a peace treaty, but paramilitary death squads continued to operate with impunity, sowing terror in vil- lages suspected of being Zapatista support bases. Then, three days before Christmas 1997, para- military fighters slaughtered forty-five internally displaced Tzotzil Mayan peasants, mostly women and children, as they prayed for peace in a chapel in the village of Acteal. The victims were members of Las Abejas (“The Bees”), a Christian group committed to nonviolence. At the time, Plough expressed hope that the massacre would mark a turning point, quoting the words of a local priest, Oscar Salinas, at a memorial service held in Acteal: These brothers and sisters of ours decided to suffocate with their own blood the growing vortex of violence that is unleashed in our state. To offer one’s life as they offered theirs is the most decent act anyone has been able to do in this time and place, in which the unending chain of offenses and misunder- standings have the word of truth caught in a blind alley. The innocent martyrs of Acteal are saving us from our confusion and cow- ardice. Praying they died. Fasting they died. This was the death they chose, praying and fasting for all of us. We can see it. With them has been planted the seed of peace. Our coverage also included a heartrending personal reflection by Las Abejas’ own priest, Pedro Arriaga: Cursed are the poor, those who hunger, those who weep? Cursed are those who are hated, driven out, and deemed criminals for the sake of the Son of Man? Where, in all this darkness, is God’s promised justice? . . . The reaction within my bowels turns demoniac: I reject the cross of suffering and death. What am I here for? Have I come to die also? I resist having my life taken unjustly. I cannot understand the murder of the peaceful, those who refuse to take up weapons. . . . We recently asked Father Arriaga how his com- munity has fared in the two decades since. He wrote in response: Opposite: Members of Las Abejas issue a demand to the Mexican army to stop occupying their communities (2013).