A statement from the Grupo de Trabajo No Estamos Todxs, originally published in Spanish and translated by Scott Campbell, on the release of the five Tzeltal political prisoners from San Juan Cancuc, Chiapas. Read more about their case here.

Valle de Jovel, November 21, 2025, from the territory called Mexico.

To all the compas that have accompanied the fight for the freedom of our imprisoned compañeros from San Juan Cancuc.

To their relatives and our five formerly imprisoned compañeros from San Juan Cancuc, to them above all.

For more than three years, we have had the enormous opportunity to accompany our imprisoned compañeros. Years of talks, of hugs, of seeing them and knowing them, of their dreams and their hopes. Above all, of their dignified demand for justice and freedom.

Today, in this land where injustice has become the norm, but resistance and dignified rage have also become a permanent condition. Today, dawn brought with it a rumor that turned into a cry and then a song: our five compañeros from San Juan Cancuc are free.

Free, but not due to the goodwill of the bad government, but due to the dignified stubbornness of their families, of their community, and of all the hands and hearts that, from so many corners of the world, did not stop fighting against the machinery that manufactures guilt.

Because during all this time, the State insisted on twisting the truth, sowing fear, and imprisoning innocents to sustain its rotten narrative. But the rage and collective dignity of thousands did not believe their lies and deceit.

Today we celebrate their freedom with hearts on fire, but without lies: we know that this victory does not erase the pain experienced or the abuses committed. We know that the structures that criminalize those at the bottom of this pyramid remain in place, that they invent crimes to break communities, that they use prisons as tools of colonial punishment. For prisons are full of those nobodies who are despised by those at the top.

That is why this celebration is not the end. It is a point of departure.

Our message is clear and straightforward:

The freedom of the five compañeros from Cancuc is the fruit of organization, of love for justice, and of collective struggle. Nothing more, nothing less.

And just as we walked to tear down this wall, we will continue walking so that no other compañerx, in Chiapas or any other geography, will ever against be uprooted from their lives for the simple act of defending their land, their people, or their dignity, or simply for not being part of the elite at the top of the pyramid.

Today we hug our five and their relatives, we greet them with this joy born of resistance.

Today we honor those who never stopped raising their voice.

Today, again, we confirm what we always knew:

When we organize and struggle together, the prisons and all in the bad government tremble.

May this triumph sow the seeds for other struggles.

May freedom become the norm.

May fighting for another world, a better world, never again be a crime.

We continue. With the same rage. With the same tenderness. With the same stubbornness. With the same clarity.

Down with the prison walls!

Grupo de Trabajo No Estamos Todxs.