Press, Activists Allowed Into Some Ex-Rebel Areas

The Mexican army rolled back its roadblocks Tuesday, allowing unescorted reporters and human rights activists into the nearly deserted villages on the perimeter of formerly rebel-held territory for the first time since troops entered the area last week.

Roads were open as far as this former stronghold of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, where rebel leaders had accused the army of bombing civilians on the first day of the crackdown. Guerrillas have also accused the government of a “dirty war” against women and children in the region.

Reporters found little evidence that the accusations are true, although entry farther into the area continued to be blocked. La Garrucha, once a village of two dozen families, was practically deserted when troops arrived Monday morning, officers said.

“The rebels have all gone to the hills,” said Pedro Lopez, a coffee buyer from a nearby village. “If there is fighting, they will be killing innocent people.”

That is what human rights organizations feared when the Mexican army sealed off the area Friday and thousands of troops moved in to serve arrest warrants on alleged Zapatista leaders.

Those fears intensified when rebel leaders released a communique Sunday that said the army had bombed La Garrucha and another Monday accusing a soldier of cutting off a man’s arm and forcing women to talk by threatening to kill their children.

As charges of atrocities mounted, so did domestic and international pressure to permit reporters to enter the area. The government had said that journalists were being stopped for their own protection, although other civilians were allowed to pass through roadblocks.

“We want reporters to be allowed in,” said Rosa Lopez, 20, part of a delegation sent by jungle communities to the county seat of Ocosingo to demand that roads be opened. “It is the only protection we have.”

Their demands have been echoed by Amnesty International and other humanitarian groups, as well as influential figures including U.S. Rep. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.) and George Vickers, executive director of the Washington Office on Latin America.

On Tuesday, Maj. David Padron, the military commander in Ocosingo, told reporters and human rights activists that state officials in the capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez, had instructed soldiers to allow their passage through the military checkpoint on the road to former rebel-held territory.

“In Mexico, there is freedom of movement,” he said. But those orders appeared not to have reached soldiers outside La Garrucha, only an hour from the former headquarters of Subcommander Marcos, the rebel leader the government has identified as Rafael Sebastian Guillen Vicente.

The army had cordoned off the area, which had been controlled by rebels for 13 months, to serve arrest warrants on Guillen Vicente and two other alleged rebel leaders. Marcos has denied that he is Guillen Vicente.

Along the rutted dirt road leading to La Garrucha, one-room, thatch-roofed shanties stood empty, many with clothes still hanging on the line. A horse was the only remaining resident of Mitontic, the town nearest to La Garrucha.

Across the road in Mitziton, the few remaining residents said they had heard four explosions Monday night after soldiers entered La Garrucha. They said they had heard nothing from that area Friday, when Zapatistas said the area was bombed--a charge the government has vigorously denied.

The villagers, however, also said they had heard rapid rifle fire from the other direction--toward La Estrella, a village where there have been reports of a confrontation between the rebels and the army.

In San Miguel, previously the gateway to the rebel zone, villagers neither fled nor reported mistreatment.

Soldiers ate most of their corn and committed a few acts of vandalism, such as destroying the hose for potable water, but otherwise left them alone, said villager Francisco Lorenzo.

Still, “they have really scared the Zapatistas,” said Lopez, the coffee buyer. He predicted that it would not be easy for the two sides to sit down and talk again: “The army’s entry has left a very bad impression.”