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CHIAPAS, MEXICO - On Sunday, September 30 another 200 members of Las Abejas (the Bees), left the refugee community of X'oyep and returned to their home community of Los Chorros, a center of paramilitary activities, after nearly four years of displacement. Red Cross volunteers, church leaders including Bishop Arizmendi, human rights workers, five CPTers and several local families accompanied the returnees in Chenalho County, a highland region of Chiapas in southern Mexico. Starting as 300, the marchers grew in number to over 1000 during the six hour procession to the Catholic Church in Los Chorros.

In November 2000, armed security forces from the federal police mounted an operation to remove the guns still being held by paramilitaries in Los Chorros. Angry townspeople with stones, shouts and shots drove off the security forces. Yet, this week the Abejas, a nonviolent Christian group with which CPT has worked since 1998, returned with songs instead of guns, with prayer instead of force.

ELECTION EVE: This return came exactly one week before municipal elections, typically characterized by fraud and violence, are to be held Sunday, October 7. Many Abejas, when asked why they would risk going home knowing that the paramilitaries still have guns, gave several reasons. Yes, conditions in the refugee camps have grown ever more intolerable. But mostly they want to be home for the vote. They want to see firsthand that there is no cheating. They believe that a victory by their candidate, Abejas leader Jose Vasquez, will help bring about conditions for justice and lasting peace in Chenalho. They also want to offer eyewitness testimony about the presence of weapons in their communities -- a charge that current officials deny.

The Abejas returns to Chuchtic, Yaxjemel and Puebla on August 28, and Los Chorros on September 30 are NOT a signal that "all is well" in Chiapas. Rather, they represent another bold step of active nonviolence on the part of pacifist Christians.

Abejas refugees are planning to return to five more communities in the next three weeks. CPTers will continue to maintain a violence-reduction presence in the camps and the return communities in the coming weeks.