yorch

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Update on Yorch: Saying Goodbye

Translated from the Spanish-language post on the Auditorio Che Facebook page.
Learn more about Mexican anarchist political prisoner Jorge “Yorch” Esquivel here.

UPDATE: At 11:30am on Tuesday, December 9, 2025, beloved compa Jorge “Yorch” Esquivel passed on. More information will be made available in time.

December 6, 2025, 3:40pm

Dear family, compas, friends, and community:

Thank you very much for all your letters, love, and solidarity with our beloved Yorch. We have read each and every one of your messages and we are very grateful because we know that he hears us and knows that he is not alone.

We want to share with you that our compañero’s health has become more delicate every day. Even with the dignified attention that he is finally receiving and the enormous and loving efforts made by doctors and hospital personnel charged with his treatment, due to the advanced state of deterioration he was in upon arriving at the hospital – where he is now – it has been very complex attending to his urgent condition. After the long period of medical neglect, the effects of the damned prison on all facets of prisoners’ health – and more in this case, where the violence of the State and UNAM orchestrated repression against him – and his prior medical issues which themselves paint a picture of potential complications due to his hospitalization, multiple surgeries, and irreversible damage suffered in 2019 when Yorch survived appendicitis that was not treated in time.

Sadly, our compañero now does not have the possibility of recovering a dignified quality of life and he has a very high probability of remaining in the state he is in now and due to the risks presented by the procedures and treatments indicated by his clinical state in the coming days. During recent weeks, Yorch was wandering from site to site without precise information. We did not receive clear news regarding his condition, treatment, or anything else. The prison authorities and those of the various hospitals where he has been this past month did not inform us of the severity of his condition until he arrived at the current hospital and we learned minutes before they had to intubate him – due to neurological failures that don’t allow for him to breathe unaided – that this was just a small part of the series of complications he has. The situation took us completely by surprise.

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We once again repeat we will not ask their approval to be free

Originally posted on It’s Going Down.

okupa-che-auditorio-unamTranslator’s note: The Okupa Che is an auditorium taken over during the 1999-2000 student strike at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the largest university in Latin America. An autonomous, anti-authoritarian space, it has faced constant repression from state and university authorities. Yorch, a member of Okupa Che, was detained on Wednesday, when police planted a backpack on him containing large quantities of crack, clonazepam and marijuana. He is now being held in a federal prison in Hermosillo, Sonora. Regeneración Radio reports that there is a strong rumor the Federal Police are preparing to evict the Okupa. Several collectives have condemned Yorch’s arrest and the UNAM Academic University Assembly has issued a sign-on letter calling for Yorch’s freedom and an end to attacks on Okupa Che.

Okupa Che
February 25, 2016
Translated by Scott Campbell

To the independent media
To allied collectives and spaces
To the general public

For several years and in various ways we have been denouncing and exposing the campaign of vilification and harassment unleashed globally against the anarchist movement and Okupa Che in particular. No more than three months ago fake text messages directed at specific people in the name of the Office of the President threatened the violent eviction of the space and the possible location and detention of some of its “squatters.” Added to that, various hit pieces in the media have appeared in recent weeks making several claims that are supposedly related to the existence of the space. Periodicals complicit with UNAM’s Office of the President and with the State – La Razón and El Universal, for example – have thrown around conjectures and assumptions about business, drug trafficking and robbery, using the risky and premeditated theory that all of this is overseen by people connected to the squat.

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