Mexico Orders Arrest of Five Rebel Leaders

After two months of frustrating attempts at dialogue, President Ernesto Zedillo went on the offensive Thursday night against the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army in Chiapas, unveiling the identity of its mysterious leader, Subcommander Marcos, and issuing arrest warrants for Marcos and four other guerrilla leaders.

The president said the warrants will be enforced by the Mexican army.

In announcing his tough new policy against the rebels, who rose up against the government 13 months ago, Zedillo said he decided to abandon negotiation for prosecution after federal police raided two Zapatista safe houses, in Mexico City and in the state of Veracruz.

The raids uncovered a stash of mortars, grenades, high-powered firearms and explosives, along with evidence indicating that the rebels were preparing for armed attacks within and outside Mexico’s southernmost state, Zedillo said.

“Today I am informing the nation that while the government persisted in attempts at dialogue and negotiation, the Zapatistas were preparing new and greater acts of violence, not only in Chiapas but in other parts of the country,” Zedillo declared, explaining why his government suddenly shifted from its commitment to negotiate a solution with the rebels.

Striking at the core of the movement identified with indigenous Mayan Indians from Chiapas, the president said agents from the federal attorney general’s office arrested a group of Zapatista rebels and seized documents “that allowed us to determine that the origin, the leadership and the goals of this group are neither populist (nor) indigenous.”

Verbally unmasking the guerrilla leader who was known to most Mexicans only by his eyes, his pipe and his black ski mask, Zedillo identified Subcommander Marcos as Rafael Sebastian Guillen Vicente. The president said nothing further about his identity--the object of a national near-obsession in the year since he led an uprising that left 145 people dead. Despite the toll in lives, Marcos’ populist rhetoric was so powerful that it won sympathy even among Mexico City’s middle class.

But Zedillo said documents discovered at the safehouses indicated that the Zapatistas grew out of an earlier guerrilla group founded in 1989 as the National Liberation Forces. The only previous evidence of that group is an 18-page catechism on how to form a guerrilla army, the Mexico City-based Center for the Historic Research of Armed Movements told The Times on Thursday night.

The document was similar in form to Marcos’ scores of communiques throughout the year, including a poem by Gen. Alberto Bayo, who fought in the Spanish Civil War and trained Cuban President Fidel Castro’s revolutionary guerrillas.

Before Thursday’s startling announcement, Zedillo’s government had made repeated attempts to establish a formal dialogue with the Zapatistas. The president stressed in his speech that he had met one of Marcos’ key demands: permitting a key Roman Catholic bishop in Chiapas who sympathized with the rebels to serve as mediator in the talks.

But Zedillo--his image severely weakened by a series of political and economic crises two months into his six-year term--also made it clear that there were other motives behind the policy shift.

“The conflict in (Chiapas) has represented a constant risk to the public tranquillity, peace and justice,” he said. “It has meant the sharp deterioration of the economic and social conditions of Chiapas’ population, above all the Indian population.”

A peaceful one-day uprising by the Zapatistas on Dec. 19 helped detonate Mexico’s worst financial crisis in more than a decade.

Underscoring his personal frustration in dealing with the Zapatistas, Zedillo asserted that all his conciliatory attempts “were met with threats of breaking the cease-fire with armed and violent outbursts in several towns in the state of Chiapas and with criminal acts and propaganda. In spite of this, I’ve continued to insist on the peaceful path to resolve the problem.”

After discovering the Zapatistas’ arms caches, Zedillo said he was forced to act “to protect the security of all Mexicans and preserve social peace. The government cannot nor should not remain indifferent to violations of the constitution that in this case clearly imply a threat against the people of Mexico and public order.”

There was no immediate reaction from the Zapatistas to the president’s late-evening announcement. But Zedillo said he has ordered intensified army patrols in Chiapas and assigned an army contingent to protect the federal attorney general’s agents as they attempt to arrest the leaders in the rain-forest stronghold near the Guatemalan border.

In an effort to soften the impact of his new strategy, the president said he will submit to the Mexican Congress an amnesty bill to cover any Zapatistas who agree to surrender their arms--an offer few members of the guerrilla force have agreed to in the past. He said the government will also intensify social programs and dialogue with unarmed activist groups to redress their grievances.

“This decision in no way means that the government prefers to opt for violence to resolve the Chiapas conflict, nor does it abandon its responsibility to attend to the legitimate causes for the social unrest,” he said.

“The government is convinced that the actions taken today would be a decisive step toward a just and definitive peace in Chiapas. We will push for a solution that will respect the dignity and security of the total population.”