Chiapas Voters Conquer Fears to Test Democracy

Early Sunday morning, the village leader here sounded an aged bull’s horn summoning townspeople to the first elections ever held in this tiny hamlet deep in Zapatista rebel territory.

They came, scrambling over narrow, muddy paths, down hillsides covered with corn patches, and waited hours to cast the mysterious ballots that they hope will change their hardscrabble lives.

“I voted for the Zapatistas!” said a 55-year-old woman in a floral-print dress as she left the makeshift polling station. Presumably, hers was a vote for the left, since the rebels do not appear on the paper ballots.

“And why not? Let’s see what they can do for us.”

Here in the cradle of Mexico’s remarkable political revolution, thousands of Indians throughout the jungle-covered valleys and mountains of southern Chiapas rose before dawn and walked for miles to participate in a tense test of democracy.

“There are lots more people voting because we want clean elections this time,” whispered a nervous Roberto Monroyo, 30, as he stood in a long line outside a thatched-roof school in another Chiapas jungle village, Balboa, where votes--legitimately or otherwise--have always favored the ruling party.

Chiapas was the scene of a New Year’s Day rebellion by guerrillas of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, whose demands for justice and rights for Mexico’s ignored Mayan masses resonated the world over. The uprising left 145 people dead and irrevocably shifted a national political agenda just months before Sunday’s crucial elections.

Though not much of a fighting force, the Zapatistas were able to take nominal control of nearly half of this backward state’s sparsely populated territory. They quickly forced the government of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari into peace talks that have won the rebels numerous concessions, including electoral reforms.

Under Zapatista pressure, the government agreed to the highly unusual practice of allowing civilian activist groups to take a role in organizing and overseeing Sunday’s elections throughout the so-called conflict zone, where Zapatista influence is strongest.

In return, the Zapatista army agreed to withdraw into distant forests to allow the elections to take place. The rebels had threatened to retaliate if the voting is rigged but now say there will be no “immediate military response” if fraud is evident.

“As unusual as it is to allow elections (with the activist groups in charge), it is a way to keep the peace,” said a senior Mexican army officer in the Chiapas town of Ocosingo, one of several seized by the Zapatistas on New Year’s Day.

The actual number of potential voters in the area is about 30,000--minuscule in a pool of 45.7 million nationwide. But the way the elections are carried out and the hope, or frustration, that peasant voters take with them will help determine the future strength of Mexico’s political opposition, analysts say.

Despite the rhetoric and high hopes, democracy was having a few problems in the conflict zone Sunday.

In Zapata, a town in Chiapas’ southeast corner that appears on few maps, only about 60 people had voted by noon because of delays and confusion. Some could not find their names on the voter registration list, which seemed to contain names of people who had left long ago; others did not have their required voting credentials.

In San Cristobal de las Casas, the second-largest city in Chiapas and one that was also briefly overrun by rebels Jan. 1, anger over a shortage of ballots triggered a raucous protest by more than 1,000 frustrated voters who filled the central plaza and shouted, “Fraud!” witnesses said. There, as in other parts of the country, a polling station designated for voters who cannot reach their home district ran out of ballots, stranding scores of people. The absentee ballots are of particular importance in Chiapas because violence has displaced large numbers of people from their homes.

In the Chiapas capital of Tuxtla Gutierrez, police fired tear gas to disperse several hundred people protesting a similar shortage of special ballots. Three people were arrested.

Elsewhere, military checkpoints continued to stop Mexicans, journalists and foreign election observers traveling into the war zone. Public transportation seemed nonexistent, forcing many to walk for hours to their polling stations. And fearing violence or renewed guerrilla attacks, scores of people abandoned their towns in the week leading up to the election and sought refuge in larger cities or refugee camps.

Still, in Zapata, in other tiny villages along the San Quintin Valley and in larger towns on the edge of the war zone such as Ocosingo, Altamirano and San Miguel, initial reports indicated that voter turnout was substantial.

“We are voting to change the government and make it democratic,” said Gildardo Jimenez, 48, one of Zapata’s first settlers, who came here in search of land 16 years ago. “We want a government that does things for the people. The governments have been treating peasants like a father who abandons his children without food or a roof.

“But now we know (the government’s) tricks, and if this (the election) doesn’t work, then we have to go back to war. There will be no peace.”

In Zapata, husbands were helping their illiterate wives vote. Filemon Gomez showed his wife, Elba Lucia, where to place the X for the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). As a reporter and photographer observed with interest, the local PRD representative rushed over to explain that Lucia and the other women are simply being assisted in expressing their own political decisions, that no one is telling them whom to vote for, simply how to do it.

In Ocosingo, several thousand Indians, uniformed soldiers and other Mexican citizens filled the central plaza, under palm trees outside a freshly whitewashed Roman Catholic church, waiting to vote. Women opened umbrellas against the blistering sun.

It was at this plaza during the January uprising that five Zapatista fighters were found dead, shot in the head and their hands tied behind their backs, in what was widely reported as an incident of Mexican army abuse. A government investigation cleared the army of wrongdoing.

Despite clear support for the PRD in Zapatista strongholds like Zapata, many Indian voters seemed frightened and reluctant to express their political views. And many, whispering among themselves in Tzeltal, simply did not understand the process, nor could they decipher the political party symbols on the ballots.

Traditionally, voting in Indian villages was controlled by political bosses, or caciques, who delivered a unanimous vote in favor of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The caciques in exchange received perks and economic benefits from the government, which rarely trickled down into the village.

“I will vote for the PRI because my parents vote for the PRI and my (town) votes for the PRI,” said an 18-year-old woman who gave her name as Mariana and who had walked for two hours from her village, Nuevo Jerusalen, to vote in the war-zone village of San Quintin.

The PRI was also expected to do well among its local power base of wealthy ranchers and landowners, especially after the Zapatista rebellion inspired numerous peasant takeovers of thousands of acres of land. Chiapas history has been marked by violent land disputes and human rights abuses.

“Everyone wants the security that we already know, and that security is called ‘PRI,’ ” said Jose Luis Coria, 47, a merchant in San Cristobal de las Casas. “We are not Central America, and we do not want to be.”

With the January Indian rebellion captivating the world’s imagination, Chiapas is host now to an unusually large contingent of national and foreign observers. About 2,000 volunteers were making the rounds of a limited number of Chiapas towns and cities to help ensure clean balloting.

The non-governmental activist groups who, with the government’s Federal Electoral Institute, shared responsibility for the elections in the conflict zone turned in a spotty performance. While they helped voting go smoothly in some areas, they failed to show up in others.