The nightmare of the school that won the draw for the presidential plane of Mexico

The news that would change for the better the life of a small town in Chiapas, in the south of Mexico, it ended up becoming a nightmare for their neighbors.

At least 28 indigenous Tzeltal families from the municipality of Ocosingo reported having been forced to leave their homes after receiving threats from a criminal group.

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The reason? Refusing to invest the money they had earned in weapons in the famous draw for the presidential plane of Mexico held last year, as they claim.

“They say that the money is to buy weapons and we do not agree,” one of the spokesmen for the neighbors told local media during a recent protest.

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The “Calvary”, as they define it, began when the preschool José María Morelos y Pavón in the town obtained the number 4344899 for the raffle that put into play the equivalent of the cost of the luxurious aircraft that the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, he has tried to sell without success for years.

On September 15, 2020, his “little piece” was the winner of 20 million pesos (about US $ 950,000) and the neighbors received the news with great joy.

However, they say that shortly after it was made public that they had won, they began to receive threats from a local armed group called The Petules so that they would buy weapons with the prize won.

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High caliber weapons

In March, the parents of the school began works to improve the building with part of the money. The rest, they planned to invest in works to improve the living conditions of the town.

However, they denounce that the threats increased in tone and that even one of them was injured by bullets of men sent by the armed group to agree to their claim.

They claim that the goal of Los Petules is to attack groups from a nearby community and seize hectares of land. When threatened neighbors refused to buy the weapons, they claim that armed men expelled them from their homes.

“We left our community due to threats with high-caliber firearms,” ​​Melecio López, one of its spokesmen, told BBC Mundo.

A group of 28 families from the El Nacimiento community denounced that a month ago they left their homes for fear that the armed group known as “Los Petules” would kill them https://t.co/th5SZKTiIl

– El Universal (@El_Universal_Mx) November 22, 2021

According to the newspaper El Universal, Los Petules were accused a few days ago by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the National Front of Struggle for Socialism (FNLS) of attacking their bases in the area.

Complaints to authorities

The villagers filed a complaint with the Chiapas Indigenous Prosecutor’s Office and the State Government Secretariat, but they assure that there has been no progress to remedy the situation.

BBC Mundo contacted both institutions and they responded that they were unable to offer information about the case, although the Secretariat confirmed that it was aware of what happened after the neighborhood complaint.

Threats and attacks were on the rise, residents say, forcing at least 28 families last month to they had to flee the town to save their lives.

“We lost more than 250 head of cattle, houses, refrigerators, crops of corn, beans and corral animals and they took away our bank card, losing the right to all government benefits,” said neighbor Marcelo Santiz to the EFE Agency.

The Mexican president described the plane as a symbol of governmental excess.

The displaced say that until the group is disarmed they will not be able to return to their homes. They have been away from their homes for a month in different places in the area and fear that they could be located.

For this reason, they ask the Chiapas authorities and President López Obrador, the main promoter of the lottery draw that they won, and it ended up turning into a nightmare.

The problems of the draw

The presidential plane raffle was an idea by López Obrador to get rid of the aircraft used by his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, and identified by his government as one of the greatest symbols of luxury and waste of previous Executives.

However, given the innumerable obstacles involved in delivering an airplane of these characteristics to a citizen, it was finally decided to raffle the equivalent in money to the current value of the aircraft: 100 prizes of 20 million pesos each.

Also the solidarity end of the raffle gave a lot to talk about. The proceeds from the sale of tickets were to be used to buy medical equipment for hospitals but, given the lower-than-expected sales rate, the government decided to buy about a million tickets to distribute among medical centers.

That is to say, the government spent its own money so that hospitals could opt for a prize -funded, on the other hand, also with resources from the Executive-, instead of directly allocating that amount to the health sector and not making it depend on chance.

After the symbolic draw, the Mexican presidential plane continues to cause maintenance costs while waiting to find a buyer, something that is made difficult by all the modifications that the aircraft underwent to include luxurious details inside.

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