Zedillo Confronts Chiapas Rebels Today : Mexico: New president will visit southern state for inauguration of governor. Guerrillas are determined to halt ceremony.

By JUANITA DARLING

Dec. 8, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico —

A week after taking office, President Ernesto Zedillo today confronts guerrillas threatening to renew a long-simmering rebellion as well as thousands of protesting peasants converging on the capital of the deeply divided and nearly lawless state of Chiapas.

Rebels and peasants are determined to halt the inauguration of Gov.-elect Eduardo Robledo Rincon, candidate of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who they say was elected by fraud Aug. 21, the same day the president was chosen.

Zedillo has said he is equally determined that Robledo will take office, returning a sense of order to this impoverished state that many contend has become ungovernable.

“Welcome to the nightmare,” were the opening words of a communique to Zedillo released Tuesday by the charismatic rebel leader known as Subcommander Marcos. While Marcos stopped short of declaring war, the sentiment building in recent weeks has swollen the numbers in the state’s 16 refugee shelters from 2,800 in early August to 4,094 at the end of November.

Peasants in rebel-held territory fear a return to the violence that shook Mexico during the first 12 days of January. At least 145 died in the fighting that began New Year’s Day when the guerrillas, calling themselves the Zapatista National Liberation Army, after the turn-of-the-century Indian revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, briefly occupied four county seats near the Guatemalan border, demanding democracy and better living conditions.

In contrast to the fearful peasants, soldiers at a checkpoint on a road out of this state capital toward rebel-held territory have erected a Christmas tree made of lights.

Whether Chiapas does become a nightmare is likely to be determined largely by today’s developments. Those events will set the tone for Zedillo’s relationship with hard-line opponents, from protesters to the Zapatistas, who have observed an uneasy truce with the government since mid-January.

In the wake of protests in several states, Zedillo’s predecessor, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, took a conciliatory line with opposition parties, installing interim governors and promising new elections--though those have yet to take place. That set a precedent, some observers say, for winning elections in the street rather than at the polls.

The new president has shown his willingness to work with other parties by appointing a right-wing opposition party member as attorney general and by meeting Tuesday with legislators of all parties. However, he has indicated that he is less amenable to negotiating with angry crowds blocking statehouses to prevent inaugurations.

“We cannot make right supposed wrongs by committing other wrongs,” Zedillo told the 500 Mexican congressional representatives during his meeting with them, referring to post-electoral conflicts in Chiapas and Tabasco states.

To show his support for Robledo, the president is expected to attend the inauguration, whose exact location was still uncertain late Wednesday.

As this morning’s ceremony neared, the two sides appeared to be at a stalemate. About 2,000 peasants have arrived here, determined to prevent the inauguration.

Miguel, 26, a peasant leader from the village of San Ignacio el Gringo, near the border with Oaxaca on the north, said he had joined the five-day march to the capital “because we want the governor we elected.”

Like many of those interviewed, he refused to give his last name for fear of reprisals.

As groups of protesters arrived, they marched along the capital’s palm-lined boulevards in orderly rows under police escort and settled into the main plaza in front of the Statehouse. Unarmed police guarded the building with barricades that looked like bicycle racks.

Throughout the day Wednesday, protesters waved fists in the air and chanted slogans such as, “If there is no solution, there will be a revolution,” when television cameras approached, then dispersed to find shade when crews left.

Amado Avendano, the defeated candidate for governor, rejected Robledo’s offer of a seat in a coalition Cabinet and repudiated as “bluster” a statement issued by authorities after his weekend meeting with Interior Minister Esteban Moctezuma Barragan. The six-point statement was said to ensure a peaceful transition of power and to permit peaceful protests.

Avendano stood with Marcos and other armed guerrillas at a news conference for about 170 reporters in the remote village of Aguascalientes when the rebels said the inauguration of Robledo would mean an end to the cease-fire.

“The period of peaceful resistance in Chiapas ends the moment that Mr. Eduardo Robledo is inaugurated and usurps state executive power,” the ski-masked, pipe-smoking Marcos said. “Beginning when Eduardo Robledo takes office, anything can happen.”

Avendano will be recognized as governor in rebel-held territory, which includes parts of three huge rural counties, he added.

Robledo has said he would resign if the Zapatistas put down their arms. But the rebels have consistently refused to do that, saying weapons provide their only leverage in dealing with the government.

The Zapatistas have already broken off peace talks with the government. They had threatened a return to violence if they believed the Aug. 21 elections to be fraudulent, as they now say they do, and if Zedillo was inaugurated Dec. 1.

“Each of those dates created panic in the state,” said Jose Luis Albores, president of the local Chamber of Commerce. “We are a short way from a collapse.”

Zedillo told Congress on Tuesday that he recognizes that the violence in Chiapas is the product of desperation caused by injustice, abandonment and misery. Despite generating much of Mexico’s oil, natural gas and hydroelectric power, Chiapas is among the country’s poorest states, and its poor are overwhelmingly Indians.

“We must attack the violence at its roots, in injustice and poverty,” Zedillo said.

However, he also warned, “We can only build peace if everyone is willing to negotiate, which means giving up something.”