Some 200 people carrying machetes and sticks invaded on Friday 1st lands in the Ejido de Zarahemla, in San Quintín, in the state of Baja California.
According to Fernando Castro, president of the commissariat of the Ejido de Zarahemla, the invaders arrived at the place around 11:30 am carrying jugs of fuel.
They cut several fences and set fire to wooden houses, where producers of green beans, onions, strawberries, tomatoes, berries, grains and other products live.
They also threw stones at the producers to clear the land, causing a young man to be injured.
Castro accused Carlos Hafen, a former PRD candidate for the Ensenada municipal presidency, of the irruption.
“Hafen paid 500 pesos to some 200 Trquis, from Oaxaca, to orchestrate the violent invasion,” he said in an interview.
“He uses influentialism in the State Judiciary to promote complaints against ejidatarios and our complaints against him do not advance. He has threatened me with death since 2019 and that complaint does not advance in the State Prosecutor’s Office ”.
The president of the commissariat reproached that despite making calls for help to the municipal and state police, as well as to the National Guard, no corporation went to the site.
In April 2019, Castro reported Hafen to the Baja California State Attorney General’s Office for death threats
Men and women with sticks and machetes broke into the Ejido of Zarahemla yesterday
(Reform Agency)
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“On April 20 I was in the Zarahemla ejido in the Vicente Guerrero delegation, in San Quintín, when I received a telephone call from a private number, in which Carlos Hafen threatened to kill me and to hit me up saying that he has many acquaintances in organized crime ”, stated Castro in his complaint.
The land grabbing indictment against Hafen dates back to 2014.
According to Castro, because he was the son of some ejidatarios, the former candidate was lent 20 hectares of the Ejido de Zarahemla to work on, as well as a well for irrigation.
The area, which is located about 150 kilometers south of Ensenada, between Vicente Guerrero and San Quintín, is made up of about 8,300 hectares that were given to the ejidatarios in 1974.
However, the loan has been raised to more than 300 hectares, due to prescription lawsuits filed by Hafen against the ejidatarios.
The former candidate’s lawsuits have led to at least 15 ejidatarios being indicted for dispossession and an arrest warrant issued against Castro for the same crime.
Hafen’s idea, according to the ejidatarios, is to have possession of these productive lands and then sell them.
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