U.S. Officials Play Down Abuses in Mexico Uprising

State Department officials acknowledged on Wednesday that “some human rights abuses may have occurred” after last month’s peasant uprising in Mexico, but they asserted that President Carlos Salinas de Gortari responded in “a forthcoming and responsible way.”

In the Clinton Administration’s first public testimony on the insurrection in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, officials said they had been assured that those found guilty of abuses will be punished.

But other witnesses at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing took a harsher view of events in Chiapas, where 2,000 members of the Zapatista National Liberation Army took control of four county seats on New Year’s Day before relinquishing control several days later.

Fernando Hernandez, a Mayan leader in Chiapas, testified that the killing and disappearance of native people by the army “is a common and daily occurrence.”

Juan E. Mendez, executive director of Human Rights Watch/Americas, said members of his group who visited Chiapas found evidence of summary executions, disappearances and torture.

In Chiapas, Salinas’ political party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), “bears little resemblance to the image of modernization . . . that Salinas has carefully cultivated,” Mendez said. He added that “rural bosses with close ties to the PRI own not only the land--they also own the local police, civil authorities and judges.”

Alexander F. Watson, assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs, said he does not wish to challenge the Mexicans’ testimony.

But he told the Western Hemisphere subcommittee that Salinas should be commended for “attempting to establish a peaceful dialogue with the rebels.”

Watson said Salinas had taken steps to resolve the crisis, including instructing government officials on Jan. 6 “to respect the human rights of the civilian population.”

A few days later, he replaced his interior minister and appointed Foreign Minister Manuel Camacho Solis, known as a skilled negotiator, to serve as commissioner for peace and reconciliation, Watson said.

“A resolution of the broader problems in Chiapas will not be achieved overnight,” he testified. “It is an area of deep inequalities, where powerful landlords and local bosses have conspired to thwart the aspirations for justice and better standards of living for the rural populations.”

Watson also responded to critics who assert that the uprising showed Mexico to be an unworthy economic partner of the United States in the North American Free Trade Agreement, which the Administration pushed through Congress last year.

“The legitimate grievances of the people of southern Mexico were neither caused by NAFTA nor should NAFTA be in any way compromised by these developments,” he said. “Indeed, the events in Chiapas demonstrated more clearly than ever the need for NAFTA (because) Mexico will be drawn more into the Western community of nations.”

Amnesty International, confirming statements by the group in Mexico City last month, gave the subcommittee a report charging the army with gross violations of human rights--terrorizing Indian villages and beating, torturing and kidnaping inhabitants.

Meantime, in Mexico, officials reacted to the American hearings with equanimity that would have been surprising only a few years ago; this, perhaps, was a reflection of the closer U.S.-Mexican relationship.

The most critical comment came from Andres Rosenthal, undersecretary of foreign relations, who said they “were hardly a friendly thing to do.”

But Senate Majority Leader Emilio M. Gonzalez said American legislators “have every right to express their opinions. Criticisms between countries are inevitable.”

Times staff writer Juanita Darling in Mexico City contributed to this report.