Mikeas SÁNCHEZ GÓMEZ

Writer, poet and land defender Mikeas Sánchez Gómez was threatened with death on 7 November 2024. Sánchez told PEN International that she filed a complaint, but the Public Prosecutor's Office asked her to close the case; local human rights organisations suggested that she should not close the case for her own protection. She continued to pursue her complaint but, due to new threats, she left her community. 

Sánchez Gómez’s poetry has been a tool in stopping national and international projects in her community in Chiapas, México that would have allowed land dispossession. She also worked with the priest Marcelo Pérez, killed on 20 October 2024 for his support of Indigenous Peoples and the defence of their lands.  

Mikeas Sánchez Gómez, born in 1980 in Tzujsnäpajk, also known as Colonia Guadalupe Victoria in Chiapas, is one of the most important poets of the Indigenous Zoque People in Chiapas, working in Zoque, her mother tongue. Her volumes of poetry — including Mokaya / Mojk’Jäyä and Mumure’ tä’ yäjktambä / Todos somos cimarrones (We are all Maroons) — are both bilingual Spanish-Zoque. Sánchez’s work has been translated into Bangla, Catalan, English, German, Italian, Maya, Mixe, and Portuguese. In Chiapas, Mexico, she was awarded first place in the ‘Y el Bolóm dice …’. Her collection How to Be a Good Savage and Other Poems (Milkweed, 2024) (Cómo ser un buen salvaje y otros poemas) pairs English translations with her original bilingual texts. Mikeas has received several international awards, including the Gold Medal for Best Translation at the 2024 International Latino Book Awards (Medalla de oro a la mejor traducción en el 2024 International Latino Book Awards).