Chiapas Rebels Overrun Mexico Leader’s Agenda : Revolt: Bureaucratic gaffes, rural area’s special problems frustrate efforts to settle the dispute.

A month after rebels from the Zapatista National Liberation Army took control of four county seats in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, their cause continues to dominate the national agenda.

The uprising in the impoverished Mexican state near the Guatemalan border has overshadowed President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s weekend trip to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. It has become an issue in the national presidential campaign, provoking speculation that the party that has dominated Mexico for more than six decades may be forced to change candidates in response.

And, in a disturbing sign for Salinas himself, the rebellion has shown itself to be immune to the stunning, snap solutions that have served him so well for five years.

The president--who proved his strength days after taking office by arresting the powerful head of the oil workers’ union in a shootout--has gotten bogged down in efforts to settle the Chiapas dispute because of bureaucratic gaffes and for reasons that can only be seen and understood here, far from the capital.

Consider, for example, the experiences of peasant farmer Valentin Gomez and his neighbors. He says the guerrilla occupation is the closest that his edge-of-the-jungle village of adobe huts has come to peace in his 23 years.

Constant disputes with private ranchers over land and cattle have kept the semi-communal farm, called an ejido , in an uproar for decades.

Gomez said the army always seemed to take the side of the ranchers. When the rebels swept into this area, they installed a roadblock just outside of town--a blockade that Gomez and his neighbors now see as protection from the army.

“In our communities, we can say that peace has not existed,” Gomez said. “We have been quiet because the army has kept us that way. We cannot sue a rancher because his cattle trample our corn. We cannot organize a demonstration because people are afraid of being beaten up. This is not peace.”

Gomez and his guerrilla-sympathizing neighbors are not eager for normalcy to return if that means the army and government will regain control. Their resistance has contributed to the deadlock that has plagued Salinas and his government negotiators, who have come under increasing pressure from refugees, ranchers and international public opinion to settle the Chiapas crisis.

Earlier, Salinas appeared to move decisively, firing his Interior minister and naming Manuel Camacho Solis, the former Mexico City mayor and his government’s top conciliator, as his peacemaker.

Salinas and Camacho agreed to accept help from Samuel Ruiz, an Indian rights activist and bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas who has often clashed with the government over its treatment of descendants of the Maya Empire who make up one-third of Chiapas’ population.

Ruiz opened a line to the Zapatistas. And there has been some progress toward a settlement. On Friday, for example, the government freed 38 of 70 prisoners suspected of participating in the rebellion, and it ordered an investigation into the deaths of five guerrillas the army denies having executed.

Still, a promised government announcement of a peace proposal was canceled last week. And while Camacho said Saturday that both sides have agreed to an agenda for face-to-face talks, no date has been set.

Meantime, other government initiatives have produced embarrassments as they have played into longstanding feuds in Chiapas.

There was, for instance, the radio campaign to get Chiapans to turn in suspected guerrillas. Such efforts instead have turned into witch hunts in which neighbors have sought to settle old scores with neighbors, said Ellen Lutz, a representative of Americas Watch.

This is what apparently happened in Oxchuc, 12 miles east of San Cristobal. Army troops arrived there on Jan. 15, allegedly to protect residents who had been clamoring for aid since Jan. 2, when Zapatistas retreating from San Cristobal entered their county seat, also called Oxchuc, burning government buildings.

But to the chagrin of many in the area, by the afternoon after the army arrived, local officials were combing villages and arresting people.

In the village of Tuxaquilja, they reportedly pulled one man from his house, boxed his ears and threw him in the back of a pickup, without explanation. On the ride nine miles down a mountain to the county seat, the man said he was kicked and beaten. He was turned over to soldiers, who tied his hands behind his back and took him in a troop truck to a nearby army base, along with 16 other men from the township.

At the army base, the man said he was beaten and threatened with execution unless he confessed to being a Zapatista.

“Of course, I confessed, even though I had never heard of the Zapatistas until they entered Oxchuc,” he said.

The Defense Ministry has denied that the army has tortured prisoners.

The 17 Oxchuc prisoners eventually were taken to Cerro Hueco prison in the state capital of Tuxtla Gutierrez; there they received food for the first time since their arrest, the man said.

On Jan. 20, the men were released.

All were members of the civic group Tres Nudos, “Three Knots,” the Spanish translation of Oxchuc and a reference to the Mayan belief that a rope tied in three places is strong and well-balanced.

For two years, the 24 Oxchuc villages that formed Tres Nudos have received direct government loans and aid to start a corn mill and tortilla factory, as well as to finance corn, bean and potato crops. Group members argue that municipal authorities were angry at them because they had bypassed the usual aid channels--meaning some officials lost a chance to get at the government money.

Local officials refused to talk with reporters.

Similar incidents have been reported in communities where Zapatistas invaded, then left. The government’s National Human Rights Commission reported last week that charges have been dropped against 58 of the 131 people arrested in connection with the uprising.

As the guerrillas have fled to the jungle, they have sent out a steady stream of refugees, worsening the chaos confronting Salinas.

Manuel de la Cruz was returning to Agua Dulce, the family ranch a few miles from San Miguel in guerrilla-held territory. He was full of determination to defend the family homestead after a three-day meeting organized by independent peasant groups in San Cristobal.

But when he stopped in to see his sister, who lives in a village along the route, he found that his father, Alejandro, the 82-year-old patriarch, had brought three generations of the family out of Zapatista territory. Mounted on 10 horses with grandchildren trailing on foot, the De la Cruz family abandoned the ranch Alejandro had bought with his savings as a day laborer 20 years earlier.

Rebels stopped the caravan at roadblocks along the route and tried to force them to turn back. “I told them that their pistols did not scare me,” Alejandro said. “ ‘I’m old. If you want to kill me, kill me. If not, get out of my way.’ ”

As the uncertain cease-fire in the region drags on, more people are making the same decision, filling refugee camps in towns outside the rebel areas. They are straining the state’s limited resources at the same time the fighting is destroying its never-robust economy. The coffee harvest is already lost; the cattle appear to be next.

When guerrillas swooped down on the 470-acre ranch he and his father own, killing and eating a steer, Jose Francisco Lopez decided not to go back.

Lopez, manager of the Ocosingo Cattlemen’s Assn., which ships 25,000 head of cattle a year to the United States for fattening, said 46 local ranches have been sacked since the year began. Local newspapers reported that 150 ranchers have left their spreads in or near rebel territory.

“There are constant confrontations between comrades and ranchers,” Gomez, the peasant farmer, said. “These are problems that have gone on for 40 or 50 years.”

And even when peasant groups, such as the Rural Collective Interest Assn., have won some victories, he said, they have often proven hollow.

Two years ago, for example, at the collective’s insistence, the government expropriated a 6,000-acre ranch called El Rosario, dividing the land among six ejidos , including San Miguel. Peasants soon realized the land was suitable only for pasture and applied for loans to buy cattle so they could begin ranching.

They were told that for environmental reasons, there is an embargo on ranching so close to the Lacandon rain forest. Some people have tried planting corn on the land, but yields are low, Gomez said.

Ironically, some observers believe the peace process has gotten mired in large part because, in the past, the government was so slow to respond to Chiapas peasants’ peaceful petitions for land, schools and medical service. As one parish priest noted, “The conflict would never have occurred at all if the government had not taken so long to find solutions that people became desperate.”