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Report from Chiapas, Mexico
INDIGENOUS PEOPLE VS. DIRTY WAR

By Gloria La Riva
San Crist"bal, Chiapas, Mexico

While the Mexican government talks peace, its actions speak
otherwise. The Salinas government is at war with the indigenous
people of Chiapas. And the war is widening.

The Salinas government's Commission for Peace and Reconciliation,
headed by Manuel Camacho Solis, spent several days traveling to
small villages in Chiapas with well-publicized "caravans of
peace."

But as the "peace caravan" was winding its way to Las Margaritas
Jan. 13, a column of 20,000 Mexican troops--the most ever
assembled in Chiapas--advanced toward the region of Guadalupe
Tepeyac near the Guatemalan border.

The column was preparing for what the Mexican military calls a
"final offensive" against the Zapatistas in its Bulletin No. 13.

During the so-called cease-fire, combat between the Mexican army
and Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) was reported in the
Tzetzal villages of San Miguel Patathe, Cuvi, Celicias, Patihitz,
Rio Blanco, Balaxle and Bamalha.

Guadalupe Tepeyac is a jungle area southeast of San Crist"bal. It
is mainly populated by Tojolabal people, one of nine major Mayan
peoples.

DANGER OF A MASSIVE ATTACK BY ARMY

Although the army offensive appears to be postponed, the danger
of a massive attack exists as long as the deployment remains.

Since Jan. 2, the Zapatistas have held Absalon Castellanos
Dominguez captive in that area. Castellanos is a notorious
landlord and former governor of Chiapas. As military commander of
Chiapas for 12 years, Castellanos conducted brutal campaigns
whenever Indians tried to organize.

Mexican army troops sow fear in the villages they occupy and pass
through. In the Chilin neighborhood of Chanal, a village 30 miles
east of San Crist"bal, the Mexican army arrested and tortured 21
Indian villagers on Jan. 8.

Soldiers then took them 90 miles from their homes before
releasing them several days later.

The Zapatistas are calling for the removal of army troops from
Chiapas as one of the conditions to consider peace talks.

Many indigenous and Mestizo activists have little reason to
believe the government's claims it seeks peace. People who would
not give their names for fear of reprisal talked about a long
history of government forces grossly violating basic human rights
with severe beatings, killings and disappearances.

Roger Maldonado, a Mexican human-rights activist with the
organization CONPAZ in San Crist"bal, said: "The government is
now waging a dirty war, repression against the indigenous people
of Chiapas. This is why they are using heavy force from the
start."

Marta Figueroa, an attorney with a women's rights group in San
Crist"bal, said that the federal government refuses to allow the
International Red Cross to provide medical aid or food.

Down a winding road from San Crist"bal de las Casas to Ocosingo
50 miles away, two cars stopped to get directions from three
Indian men. Asked if they had been affected by the war, one man
spoke with obvious fear.

He whispered, "We can't gather here, we can't talk." Mexican army
soldiers were visible along the road.

Camacho's government "Peace Caravan" had just passed by five
minutes before, but it provided little comfort to him.

The Mexican army is carrying out a systematic operation of
search, arrest and intimidation. This operation follows the
campaign of bombing in the mountains during the early days of the
war, which caused many casualties.

The government denies bombing deaths and repression of civilians.
But conversations with villagers contradict the government.

Helicopters constantly fly overhead. They are U.S. helicopters,
many purchased supposedly for the so-called drug war.

CLASS STRUGGLE IN OCOSINGO

The town of Ocosingo was the scene of the heaviest combat between
the Zapatistas and Mexican army. One woman there said 150 people
died from government bombings in her neighborhood of San
Sebastian, more than the government admits died in the whole
uprising.

Ocosingo residents courageously denounced the army's repression
against them. Some openly sympathize with the Zapatista demands.

One man said, "The guerrillas, the compa$eros, never mistreated
anyone in the village."

In Chiapas, the class struggle is clearly divided between the
campesinos--mostly Indians--and the large landlord growers of
corn and coffee. The right-wing forces are now mobilizing to
support the occupying army and to help intimidate the campesinos.

In Ocosingo, these right wingers--mostly landlords and
middle-class residents--marched through the streets shouting
"down with human rights." They also pressured people to sign a
paper calling for the continued presence of the Mexican army.

Those refusing to sign face reprisals.

PEACE WITHOUT JUSTICE

The government claims it wants peace--but it apparently really
means to impose "pacification" at the hands of the army, peace
without justice, without improvement in the desperate economic
conditions.

One man said, "We are only paid 5,000 pesos [$1.70] by the
ranchers, and they even try to lower our wages to 3,000 or 4,000
pesos [$1 to $1.33] a day." The minimum wage in Mexico is about
$4 a day, hardly enough to survive.

Everywhere, the poverty is intense and widespread. The struggle
in Chiapas is clearly not over. The Zapatistas, the thousands of
peasants who took up arms, even with wooden rifles and spears,
did so because they have no other alternative.

The Zapatistas also speak for tens of millions of indigenous and
poor people throughout Mexico and Latin America.

Oswaldo Guayasamin, famed Ecuadoran painter, said that because of
the Zapatista uprising "a strong response could arise among
indigenous peoples throughout Latin America, Guatemala, Brazil,
Peru, Ecuador."

                               -30-

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World,
55 West 17 St., New York, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@blythe.org.)


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