Latest ‘Rebels’ Are Called Symptom of System’s Decay

The government says they’re bandits, criminals or drug traffickers who pose no threat to national security.

The political opposition suggests they could be police agents masquerading as rebels to justify a crackdown on dissident peasant groups.

Local residents are too afraid to speculate. They’re calling the armed group that suddenly appeared Friday in their impoverished state of Guerrero--wearing military uniforms, brandishing dozens of new AK-47 assault rifles and declaring war on the government--”the Masked Ones.”

Here in the capital, analysts say that whoever they are, the members of the Popular Revolutionary Army and their alarming appearance in Mexico’s political landscape symbolize the collapse of the nation’s traditional authoritarian system and the urgent need for a new democratic order to take its place.

“This is another indication of the decomposition of the Mexican political system--an era of disintegration,” said Lorenzo Meyer, a prominent Mexican historian and political analyst.

“The old system is breaking down, and the new system is not yet there to replace it,” commentator Sergio Sarmiento said. “The old system wasn’t democratic, but it worked because it could control these armed groups. Now we’re seeing a collapse of that traditional system . . . and I see no reason why we shouldn’t see more people taking up arms like this.”

The analysts say the collapse is rooted in the policies of President Ernesto Zedillo, who--under the banner of democracy--has ceded many of the traditional absolute powers that previous presidents used to crush similar movements before they began.

Zedillo also has moved to distance his government from the party that has ruled Mexico--and especially Guerrero--with an iron fist for nearly seven decades.

Zedillo has not commented publicly on the new armed group, but he stressed his commitment to continue his reforms in a speech Monday. “Even in these complex moments,” the president said, “we can devote ourselves to the enormous task of profoundly reforming our political, economic and judicial systems.”

That policy also is behind the government’s decision to talk rather than fight to end the armed Indian rebellion in the southernmost state of Chiapas. Peace talks with the Zapatista National Liberation Army--which on Monday emphatically denied any links to the Guerrero group--are scheduled to restart this week.

But analysts said the Chiapas rebels may have encouraged the new group to proclaim its revolutionary stand in a manifesto that echoed the Zapatistas, who rose up against the government Jan. 1, 1994. Their two-week shooting war left more than 145 dead before the talks began more than two years ago.

“When you give an armed movement the status of a parallel government,” Sarmiento said, “the power you’re giving them is enough of an incentive to encourage other groups to resort to arms.”

Most analysts said the threat posed by the armed group in Guerrero is hardly comparable to that of the Zapatistas: Guerrero’s masked group disappeared without a trace after its Friday declaration--although thousands of army troops continued their hunt Monday for the self-proclaimed guerrillas.

But most analysts here also agreed that Guerrero was a dramatic and appropriate setting for what author and analyst Carlos Montemayor called “one more warning that Mexico must profoundly change its political and economic policies.”

The state is among Mexico’s poorest. It has a history of armed rebellion; it was named for a revolutionary who took up arms against the Spaniards and was the site of a leftist guerrilla insurrection as recently as the 1970s. The killing of 17 peasants by police there last year has spawned deep popular unrest.

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A Supreme Court investigation personally ordered by Zedillo implicated the state’s top officials, including the governor--a member of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party--in the massacre, but no one has been charged with any crimes.

“These conditions, after so many years of repression, facilitate armed conflicts,” Montemayor said.

Historian Meyer said the odds are high that the new armed group is a genuine revolutionary movement. “After a long history of exploitation, violence and political-boss authority and a long list of deaths, it is very possible that they decided to rise up in arms.”

But the confusion surrounding the group’s identity and goals is, in itself, a reflection of a collapse of authority, Meyer said. The government “tells us one thing, but ultimately the people think anything could be possible.”