Official Quits in Wake of Mexico Strife

Mexican Interior Minister Patrocinio Gonzalez Blanco Garrido, a former governor of the embattled Chiapas state, Monday became the first political casualty of the deadly Indian uprising that has jolted the government of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

Saying he was acknowledging “that which did not work,” Salinas announced that he had accepted Gonzalez’s resignation and replaced him with Atty. Gen. Jorge Carpizo MacGregor, a former human rights ombudsman.

When he was governor in Chiapas, Gonzalez’s regime was implicated in some of the numerous human rights abuses and conflicts over land that many Mexicans believe contributed to the New Year’s Day uprising by largely Indian guerrillas.

The new interior minister, Salinas said, will be in charge of “quickly restoring tranquillity to Chiapas and maintaining (peace) elsewhere in the country.”

Salinas is faced with a widening political crisis following the rebellion by guerrillas claiming to fight for indigenous rights in the impoverished hills of southern Mexico.

Ten days after the uprising began, the Mexican army is still fighting pockets of rebel resistance, while violence in the form of bombs and sabotage has spread to the capital. At the same time, national and international protests over alleged abuses committed by the army are growing.

“We are no longer talking about a local confrontation but a national problem that has exposed the profound tectonic fractures that run through Mexico’s social fabric,” columnist Rodolfo Stavenhagen said Monday in the independent La Jornada newspaper. “So far, the government has simultaneously used a hard line while proposing, without much credibility, the soft line (negotiations). Undoubtedly in the highest spheres of government, they are debating both alternatives.”

Salinas ousted Gonzalez as part of a larger overhaul of his Cabinet, which included the naming of a new foreign minister. Manuel Camacho Solis, the previous foreign minister and a popular former Mexico City mayor, was named to head a reconciliation commission for Chiapas.

Gonzalez has come under considerable criticism both before and after the Indian insurrection, the worst outbreak of violence in Mexico in more than two decades. It has claimed more than 100 lives.

As interior minister, Gonzalez was in charge of national security, the efficiency of which is now in doubt because of the rebellion.

Last summer, Gonzalez repeatedly denied Mexican press reports of the existence of guerrilla groups in Chiapas; the government late last week was forced to admit it knew about the group for months but did not act.

Further, Gonzalez was governor of Chiapas for five years until he was named interior minister a year ago. During his governorship, conflicts escalated between landless peasants and well-off farmers.

Human rights groups have accused Gonzalez of using violence to put down peaceful Indian protests. They also cite the case of Father Jose Padron, an outspoken advocate of Indian rights; as part of Gonzalez’s running battle with pro-left priests, Padron was jailed illegally for 50 days.

“The repression was so harsh,” said Querubin Mayorga Penagos, an opposition politician from Chiapas, “that we began calling him Gov. Latrocinio”-- a word in Spanish that rhymes with Gonzalez’s first name and means “thievery.”

“When he took office he said he would only act according to the law, but he always denied justice to the poor of countryside, where the only thing that counted was the money of the caciques (political bosses),” Mayorga told the magazine Proceso.

Gonzalez, a well-connected, longtime member of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, has always insisted he acted only by the letter of the law.

The decision to replace Gonzalez with Carpizo, a veteran of human rights issues, appeared to be Salinas’ attempt to counter growing condemnation here and abroad of excesses allegedly committed by the army.

As head of the National Human Rights Commission formed by Salinas in 1990, Carpizo won praise as a tireless advocate as he denounced police torture, extortion and even murder. Last year, Salinas named Carpizo attorney general.

The guerrillas have threatened a wider war--threats that seemed real after bombs exploded over the weekend at electrical transmission towers, in parking garages and at a Mexico City military base.

Deep in Chiapas, guerrillas were pulling back Monday into the jungle around Las Margaritas, one of the towns invaded on New Year’s Day. Ninety hospital workers, whom the guerrillas had seized Dec. 30 in the town of Guadalupe Tepeyac, were released along the road as the guerrillas moved out. Edmundo Angulo, a truck driver, said the rebels had used Guadalupe Tepeyac as a transit point to move their troops from Las Margaritas, which they abandoned Jan. 2, to a town called La Realidad, farther back in the jungle.

Times Staff Writer Juanita Darling contributed to this report from Comitan, Mexico.