Thousands in Mexico March to Back Indians

Thousands of workers, peasants and students marched through the Mexican capital Friday demanding an end to the military force used to fight Indian guerrillas who are threatening to spread their rebellion beyond the remote hills of southern Mexico.

The government of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, already badly shaken by the uprising that has claimed more than 100 lives, now faces mounting political protest over the decision to launch a vigorous ground and air assault against the rebels. Human rights and church officials fear civilian casualties, and there have been reports of apparent extrajudicial executions of suspected guerrillas.

The Zapatista National Liberation Army, as the rebels call themselves, claimed responsibility for toppling two electrical towers late Thursday night in the states of Michoacan and Puebla, south of Mexico City. Officials confirmed the damage Friday but said power was not interrupted.

As new details emerged about their origins, the Zapatista rebels vowed to wage their self-proclaimed “war” against the Mexican government in the capital and, in communiques faxed to newspaper and wire service offices, invited followers to join in acts of sabotage.

Support for the rebels spread to Los Angeles, where hundreds of demonstrators gathered noisily but peacefully Friday night in front of the Mexican Consulate in the Wilshire District to condemn the Mexican government’s tactics in putting down the uprising.

In the hills surrounding San Cristobal de las Casas in the southern Chiapas state where the violence began New Year’s Day, government troops in helicopter gunships and armored personnel carriers continued hunting rebels who have largely retreated from the towns they first occupied.

Thousands of soldiers conducted house-to-house searches in San Cristobal, while sporadic air attacks continued to be reported near the towns of Tenejapa and Cancuuc, the seats of the two poorest townships in impoverished Chiapas.

The most deadly armed rebellion in Mexico in decades has cast a rare--and perhaps unwanted--spotlight on this country’s military, traditionally the silent partner in Mexican government. With an estimated 12,000 troops deployed to fight the rebels, the army has been thrust into the unfamiliar role of guerrilla warfare. And with that comes unfamiliar scrutiny.

“The army has been a taboo subject here. Now there are public questions about the role it is playing, what human rights violations have been committed, who is the army accountable to,” said Mexican political scientist Denise Dresser.

“And this will lead to greater questions about the Mexican government itself.”

In contrast to Central America, where armies traditionally exert control over civilian authorities, Mexico’s military and civilian powers operate under an agreement whereby the army submits to civilian order but the government does not interfere with military internal affairs. The army is rarely criticized in public.

“The military does not want to be the fall guy for the failure of civilian political decisions that were made or not made,” said Roderic Camp, a political scientist at Tulane University who has written on the Mexican military.

“Therefore the civilian leadership has to move very gingerly in terms of what it asks the military to do and what restrictions it places on the military to carry out those functions.”

The army killed dozens, perhaps hundreds, of students in a demonstration in 1968, but not since a movement led by Lucio Cabanas in the southern Sierra Madre range in the early 1970s has the Mexican army had to fight guerrilla warfare. For nearly eight years, Cabanas rallied rebels in Guerrero state before he was slain by the army.

For image-conscious Salinas, who has used most of his five years in office to portray Mexico as modernizing democracy and reliable trade partner, the surfacing allegations of human rights abuse pose yet another public relations headache.

The president took great pains in a nationally televised speech Thursday night to praise the army in the face of those reports.

“The army and the state security forces are fulfilling their responsibility according to the law,” he said, denying that troops would attack civilian populations.

But his comments did little to assuage the mostly leftist demonstrators who marched Friday down Mexico City’s La Reforma boulevard, chanting for an end to the “massacre” in Chiapas.

Many of the protesters, estimated at about 6,000, said they did not support the rebels’ use of violence but said they agreed fully with the demands of land, political freedom and social justice that the rebels say they are fighting for.

“We are showing solidarity with the political protest,” said Jose L. Ortiz, a 56-year-old Nahuas Indian who walked near the head of the march. “If the people in Chiapas reached this extreme (of violence), then it is because of the political errors of this government and past governments. These people have been ignored for centuries.”

Still, some of the protesters carried banners supporting the Zapatista rebels, including one that bore a portrait of Emiliano Zapata, the revolutionary war hero whose name the rebels have borrowed.

At the Los Angeles march, 400 demonstrators marched along the sidewalk outside the consulate, chanting “Viva La Revolucion” and waving signs proclaiming “Stop the Massacre of the Maya.” Costumed performers danced to the beat of a drum.

There was no response from the consulate, which was closed for the day.

Late Friday, the government’s attorney general’s office said autopsies had been completed on 30 bodies recovered at Ocosingo, scene of the heaviest fighting. Reporters had discovered bodies at Ocosingo with signs of having had their hands tied behind their backs and with single shots to the head. But the government’s examiners concluded that only one of the dead might have been the victim of an illegal execution.

Officials Friday did not address the signs that the rebels may have a larger network than first thought, as the destruction of the electrical towers could suggest. In addition, the literature distributed by the organization is sophisticated, apparently using offset printing, photos and colors.

All along, however, Salinas and his aides have insisted that rather than an indigenous movement, the Zapatista army is controlled by non-Indian “professionals” who have received help from Guatemalan or Salvadoran leftists.

However, researchers who live in San Cristobal said that after talking to the rebels when they invaded, they believe most of them are from eastern parts of the state that were jungle a generation ago.

“They said they were tired of not being listened to, tired of repression,” said Ron Nye, an anthropologist who has worked in southern Mexico for 24 years.

The rebels are mainly the descendants of Tzeltal Indians who were resettled to the Lacandon Rain Forest 25 years ago, he said. Their parents were landless peasants who rented farms or worked for cattle ranchers in the area around Ocosingo, about 50 miles northeast of San Cristobal.

“The government has seen the Lacandon as an escape valve,” said Nye, who is also an organic agronomist. “They were given land, but they were not given support.”

With no other alternative, they turned to the slash-and-burn farming that they had used in the highlands, said Will Hoffman, cultural projects coordinator at Casa Na Bolom, a research center in San Cristobal. In the delicate jungle, the effect was devastating. The thin layer of jungle topsoil was soon destroyed.

In recent years, the situation has worsened as the price of coffee, one crop they could grow, has plummeted and the government has removed farm price supports as part of its free market economic reforms, Nye said.

Nye bristled at government statements that the peasants were fooled into the uprising by foreigners.

“It is racist to say that the Indians were tricked,” he said. “They are much more aware of the risks than the government is giving them credit for, at least publicly.”

Military officials said they have arrested 106 suspected rebels.

Wilkinson reported from Mexico City, Darling from San Cristobal de las Casas. Times staff writer Eric Malnic contributed to this report.