Photo: PBI-Canada and PBI-Mexico at gathering outside the home of Samir Flores in Amilcingo; Friday February 20, 2026.
On February 19, 2026, PBI-Canada alongside PBI-Mexico accompanied a rally in Mexico City demanding justice for murdered Indigenous Nahuatl land and environmental defender Samir Flores Soberanes.
The following day, February 20, we were present in Amilcingo, Morelos, for the mass outside his home, a march past his radio station that went to the community’s primary school (named in his honour) and then back to his home for a meal, on the seventh anniversary of his assassination.
This excerpt of a lengthy social media post from March 14, 2026, by the People’s Front in Defence of Land and Water says:
“ALMOST 4 YEARS FROM THE BEGINNING OF THIS TRIAL, GIVES ABSOLUTION TO THE ONLY DETAINED AS ALLEGED GUILTY OF THE MURDER OF SAMIR FLORES
Yesterday, March 13, 2026, the federal judge issued a sentence on the only detainee as presumed guilty of the murder of our colleague Samir Flores Soberanes. On the one hand, the judge acknowledged that it was demonstrated in the present trial, that there was a mobile to murder SAMIR: his social activism before the Integral Morelos Project and for his complaints as a community communicator.”
On March 14, El Pais reported: “The only detainee of the three alleged perpetrators identified for the murder of activist Samir Flores has been acquitted. After a little more than a month of judicial process, …a judge… in the State of Morelos considered that the evidence and testimonies did not prove the defendant’s participation in the crime that occurred seven years ago.”
Proceso notes: “The resolution was issued after a judicial process that lasted for four years against the defendant.”
La Jornada adds: “The People’s Front in Defense of Land, Water and Air of Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala denounced that the judge, in addition to acquitting the only detainee for the murder of Samir Flores Soberanes, recognized in the trial ‘that there was a motive to murder Samir: his social activism against the Morelos Integral Project and for his complaints as a community communicator.’ For this reason, they demanded that the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes against Freedom of Expression (Feadle) of the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) carry out a serious investigation to find the real material and intellectual perpetrators of Samir’s murder, which occurred on February 20, 2019 outside his home in Amilcingo, municipality of Temoac. Morelos.”
In another La Jornada article, Juan Carlos Flores Solis, the lawyer for the People’s Front, says: “This ruling not only acquits him, but also shows the deficiencies and the possible cover-up and fabrication that was carried out by the Morelos Prosecutor’s Office in the theory of the case on Samir’s murder.”
An Animal Politico article also quotes Flores stating: “The judge agreed with us that it seems that the inefficient investigation of the Morelos prosecutor’s office was intended to cover up those who committed the murder of Samir or that the truth was not reached. …The only certainty that we have been able to verify in this trial is the inefficiency and bad faith that the Morelos prosecutor’s office had in this investigation.”
Proceso further reports: “The victims’ legal counsel maintained that the investigation should be expanded to investigate both the alleged perpetrators and those who would have ordered the murder. Among the people they consider should be called to testify or investigated are state prosecutor Uriel Carmona; the former governor of Morelos Cuauhtémoc Blanco; the politician Hugo Eric Flores Cervantes; as well as Valentina Lavín and Angelina Zamora, former treasurer who is detained for alleged links to organized crime. They also pointed out that the role of speeches or political decisions during the consultation of the energy project should be investigated, including by then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.”
After the acquittal, Flores Solis said: “It is a call to the Mexican State, society and the international community to be attentive and vigilant, and to activate investigations that allow us to reach the truth.”
At PBI-Canada we continue to be attentive and vigilant to this case.
Accompaniment
At PBI-Canada we also continue to highlight that the FPDTA-MPT has linked the Morelos Integral Project (PIM) megaproject that Samir Flores Soberanes and the People’s Front oppose to Toronto-based Alamos Gold and its Esperanza mine. In November 2020, they posted: “[Mexican president] Lopez Obrador’s [support for the PIM] betrays the peasant and the promise of change of his government, to favour transnational corporations [including] Canadian miners like Alamos Gold.”
Peace Brigades International has accompanied the People’s Front of Land, Water and Air of Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala since early 2020.
