Cover
story After massacre, wider trouble looms in Mexico
By JOHN
ROSS Special to the National Catholic
Reporter Mexico City
While Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and Bill Clinton addressed
world leaders at the United Nations World Drug Summit in early June, hopes for
a peaceful way out of violent conflict in Mexicos indigenous Chiapas and
Guerrero states were unraveling.
Military and police actions in both regions resulted in at least
20 indigenous casualties. Fighting broke out between Mexican troops and the
Zapatista rebels for the first time since January 1994. In addition, the
national commission charged with mediating the conflict in Chiapas, headed by
Bishop Samuel Ruiz García, dissolved. The death of the commission kills
chances for further negotiations with the government if international
intervention is not accepted.
In Guerrero, conflict erupted June 7 just before dawn in the
threadbare Mixtec Indian village of El Charco, south of Acapulco.
A bulletin issued by the Mexican Secretary of Defense claimed that
army patrols involved in The Permanent Campaign Against Drug
Traffickers engaged in a confrontation with suspected
subversives who were meeting in the towns bilingual
schoolhouse. Military sources claimed troops were fired upon from the school.
Villagers, however, questioned closely by reporters, said no shots came from
the direction of the school house and that persons gathered at the schoolhouse
were sleeping when the military opened fire.
More than 50 people, including farmers from 15 surrounding
communities and representatives of a new guerrilla group, were allegedly inside
the school when the killing began. The three-hour assault resulted in 12 of the
schoolhouse occupants dead, five wounded and 27 detained, including five
minors.
In recent months, the Mexican army has stepped up
counterinsurgency operations in the coastal mountain regions of Guerrero and
Oaxaca against the Popular Revolutionary Army even though the group has been
inactive most of this year.
A previously undeclared organization, the Revolutionary Army of
the Insurgent People, issued its first communiqué, claiming some of
those killed in the schoolhouse as its cadres. The Revolutionary Army of the
Insurgent People is thought to have split off from the Popular Revolutionary
Army, a self-proclaimed front of 14 radical organizations, over tactical
differences.
According to Juan Angulo, editor of the combative El Sur in
Acapulco, the Insurgent People army is largely indigenous and made up of
dissenters from the terrorist-like attacks of the Popular Revolutionary Army.
An example of such attacks would be the August 1996 shoot-out in the Oaxaca
coastal resort of Huatulco that took 11 lives. Angulo said that leaders of the
Insurgent People army view such actions as counterproductive, causing
communities that would be sympathetic to the rebels to withhold support.
According to testimony given by one of the captured guerrilla
fighters, who later claimed she was tortured by the military, the Insurgent
People army has at least two columns of fighters in Guerreros
76 municipalities.
The emergence of a new armed group does not bode well for the
Zedillo administration, which already has an estimated 60,000 troops on patrol
in southern Mexico. Analysts have expressed concern that the appearance of the
Insurgent People group may trigger similar uprisings elsewhere, and the
resurgence of violence in Guerrero sent fresh tremors through an already
sinking Mexico City stock market.
What actually transpired at El Charco?
Reporters were kept away from the schoolhouse and could not view
the dead in the Acapulco morgue for 24 hours.
Villagers detained told the press several of the dead were
executed at point blank range both on the basketball court adjacent to the
schoolhouse and inside the classrooms. These people were executed at a
farmers meeting, local Mixtec leader Marcelino Santos told the Mexico
City daily La Jornada.
Aguas Blancas killings
The killings at El Charco took place three years to the month
after the massacre of 17 farmers by Guerrero state police at Aguas Blancas 100
miles up the coast -- an event that attracted international condemnation and
gave birth to the Popular Revolutionary Army.
In its first communiqué, the Revolutionary Army of the
Insurgent People held the government responsible for the killings and vowed to
respond. The group also called upon national and international
human rights organizations to investigate the bloodshed at El Charco and asked
for intervention by ecclesial authorities.
It may not be the best moment to petition for church involvement.
Approximately 200 miles southeast of El Charco, on the same Sunday the killings
occurred at the schoolhouse, Bishop Samuel Ruiz of San Cristóbal de las
Casas stood in the pulpit of the citys cathedral announcing his
resignation as director of CONAI, the National Comission of Mediation, the link
between the government and the Zapatista rebels for negotiations. During his
homily, Ruiz said he dissolved the commission because of Zedillos failure
to honor the San Andres peace agreements forged with the Zapatistas in February
1996 and because of the governments unrelenting attacks on the commission
and on the diocese.
Diocesan officials said the demise of the mediation group signaled
the end of the road for the San Andres peace accords, the government-signed
documents that guaranteed autonomy for Mexicos 56 distinct indigenous
peoples. Zedillos own version of the accords, which are opposed by the
Zapatistas, is currently stalled in congress.
The Zedillo government has ratcheted up its attacks on Ruiz since
the Dec. 22 massacre of 46 Tzotzil Indians at Acteal in the highlands of
Chiapas (NCR, Jan. 23). Accused by the government of inviting
international human rights observers to assess abuses in the conflict zone,
Ruiz was virtually branded a traitor by Interior Secretary Francisco Labastida
as the government orchestrated a campaign against what it called foreign
intervention in Chiapas.
Government peace coordinator Emilio Rabasa lambasted Ruiz for
being partial to the Zapatistas. Under the schema of the San Andres dialogue,
the mediation commission sought to convince the Zapatista forces of the
benefits of staying at the table, and the congressional commission that oversaw
the talks kept the government from walking out.
Perhaps the most acute demonization of Ruiz came May 29 when
Zedillo, speaking from a northern Chiapas stronghold of the ill-named
paramilitary group Peace and Justice, accused Ruiz of promoting
the theology of violence.
In an interview with the Mexican weekly Proceso, Ruiz
responded: The evangelists of the theology of violence are the
paramilitary groups, such as the Peace and Justice group. Later, the four
bishops of Chiapas, furious with Zedillo for insinuating that the Catholic
church promotes violence, warned against those who believe themselves
false gods, whose word is inflexible and who have an answer for
everything -- a statement viewed by most as a not-very-veiled allusion to
Zedillo and his peace coordinator Rabasa.
In abandoning the mediating commission, Ruiz critiqued the
Zapatistas for their understandable silence. The Zapatista General
Command has not issued a communiqué in five months, which made
Ruizs job as interlocutor difficult.
At least 40 diocesan churches and chapels have been closed -- one,
at El Limar, was turned into a state police barracks. Diocesan priests have
been jailed, and foreign clergy and religious have been expelled from Mexico.
Ruizs stature enhanced
Despite the campaign against him, Ruiz leaves the commission with
greater national and international prestige than ever. The commissions
work was endorsed by the Mexican Bishops Conference and Papal Nuncio
Justo Mullor. Pope John Paul II recently commended bishops who stand with Latin
Americas indigenous peoples, a decided endorsement for Ruiz at a
difficult time.
Dissolving the CONAI has allowed Ruiz to speak his mind more
freely -- he left almost immediately on a 600-mile pastoral visit to the
Lacandon jungle conflict zone where he was embraced by Mayan communities.
Like the ancient Greeks, when the government speaks of peace, it is
preparing for war, he said during his trek. The journey to the jungle
will probably be the aging bishops last before he retires at age 75 at
the end of 1999.
Having forced Ruiz out of business, Ernesto Zedillo is preparing
for life without mediation. On his own four jaunts to Chiapas in the past two
months, Zedillo offered direct negotiations with the EZLN, an
unlikely development because Ruiz has been the governments pipeline to
the rebels for the past four years.
Events in Chiapas, meanwhile, are fast slipping out of control. On
June 10, just three days after the Guerrero killings, a reported 1,500 army
troops and Chiapas public security forces, equipped with tanks, mortars and
bazookas, launched an all-out assault on the Zapatista autonomous municipality
of San Juan de La Libertad, killing at least eight Tzotzil Indians and
imprisoning more than 50.
The assault was the fourth on autonomous Zapatista strongholds
ordered by Chiapas Gov. Roberto Albores since April 10 and the first to draw an
armed response from the Zapatistas.
Details of the events at San Juan de La Libertad remain sketchy
because of restrictions on the press. International media were prohibited from
entering the town.
A government-ordered crackdown on international human rights
observers has resulted in 71 expulsions since the killings occurred at Acteal
and has considerably thinned the presence of U.S. and European religious and
nongovernmental representatives in Chiapas.
Non-Mexican human rights delegations seeking to reach the sites of
the recent killings in Chiapas and Guerrero now must apply 30 days in advance
for visas. They must also record anticipated itineraries and a list of
witnesses to be interviewed, strictures that the prestigious Washington-based
Human Rights Watch group says nullify timely observation and jeopardize the
lives of those who give testimony.
U.S. human rights groups have a particular interest in the recent
killings. U.S.-manufactured Bell 212 helicopters were deployed in both
incidents, and dozens of U.S Hummer armored vehicles were mobilized in the land
assaults. In recent years, the United States has pumped increasing amounts of
military aid into Mexico under the guise of supporting the war on drugs.
National Catholic Reporter, July 17,
1998
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