Claudia Chavez Arguelles

For over two decades, Las Abejas de Acteal, a Maya organization based in Chenalhó, Chiapas, Mexico, have struggled for justice for the 1997 Acteal Massacre. In 2014, I collaborated with survivors and their lawyers on an expert opinion documenting the massacre’s psychosocial impacts, which was submitted to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to strengthen survivors’ petition against the Mexican state. This project was designed to return to that collaboration and, together with Las Abejas and the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba), reflect on its sociolegal effects and the openings for restorative justice it helped create. Envisioned as workshops in Acteal and San Cristóbal de Las Casas, it was reshaped by Las Abejas’ organizing priorities, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the IACHR’s failure to issue a merits report. Through repeated visits, the focus shifted toward Las Abejas’ “Otra Justicia”: embodied practices of justice grounded in collective memory and alliances with other victims of state violence. This engagement culminated in a roundtable in June 2025 at Museo Jtatik Samuel Ruiz, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, which brought together survivors, Frayba, local organizations, and scholars. In this context of deepening impunity, these non-state frameworks emerge as increasingly indispensable.