Something’s Rotten in the State of Guerrero

So now Mexico has another armed uprising on its hands, or thus it seems. A group calling itself the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR, by its initials in Spanish) paraded up and down at a memorial in Aguas Blancas, Guerrero, last Friday to commemorate the massacre of 17 peasants by the police last year. Somewhere between 70 and 100 masked men descended on the gathering carrying automatic assault weapons, wearing neat and clean military-style uniforms. They read a radical, old-fashioned manifesto, fired a crisp 17-shot salute to the martyrs and promptly disappeared into the hills. All of this was videotaped and broadcast on Mexican television. Whatever else we may discover about this new guerrilla group, they obviously share Subcommander Marcos and the Zapatistas’ media savvy and flair for the dramatic.

Minor demonstrations took place that evening on the Mexico-Acapulco highway, as similarly garbed masked men stopped cars and trucks, handed out propaganda and responded with gunfire when attacked by the Judicial Police.

The last thing Mexico needs is another armed uprising in another impoverished state with another tradition of violence. But were the events in Guerrero last Friday truly another guerrilla outburst, like the Jan. 1, 1994, occupation of four towns in Chiapas by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation?

There are several reasons for doubting the authenticity of the Guerrero group. First, the timing of their appearance coincides too nicely with a series of other events that have reintroduced elements of instability into Mexican politics and markets. These include new allegations of corruption against the former administration of Carlos Salinas de Gortari and violent incidents in the southern state of Tabasco, which came on the heels of a spate of absurd rumors about President Ernesto Zedillo’s resignation. Second, the equipment shown off by the EPR--weapons, uniforms, boots, etc.--looked a bit too new, a bit too elegant. Third, the presumed guerrilla band has not really done anything other than announce its presence to the world; it has not fired a shot in combat, nor has it attempted to ambush army units that have been crowding into Guerrero. It has not even held the press conference it promised. Finally, there are too many interests in the region that stand to benefit from instability: drug-traffickers, there or elsewhere; the government, which can justify a major crackdown in Guerrero by invoking national security; the evicted former governor getting back at his enemies, or enemies of the former governor getting back at him; factions in the ruling party, PRI, seeking to weaken or pressure Zedillo. The grounds for suspicion are vast, and they are growing.

On the other hand, there are very solid reasons for believing that the EPR is for real. Guerrillas have been operating in Guerrero since the early 1970s. The proliferation of drug traffickers, kidnapings and weapons in the area goes hand-in-hand with the abject poverty and the marginalization of the countryside. It would almost be surprising if there were no guerrillas there. If authentic, this is an armed uprising that was waiting to happen.

It is also a fearsome uprising, for, if it proves to be real, it is likely to be different from the Zapatistas. The masked men of Aguas Blancas are not quite the “kinder and gentler” guerrillas of the jungles in Chiapas. Although they read their speech in the Nahuatl language, they do not come from indigenous communities; the type of groups in both urban and rural Mexico that the EPR seems to have links with are much tougher than the ones that even the mestizo Zapatistas come from. Here there are no links with the church, no indigenous community demands, no attempts to awaken civil society and march in tandem with it to democratize Mexico. The EPR, if real, will confront the country as a terrifying blend of urban violence, discursive extremism and rural harshness and misery. The risks of a protracted, dirty war, like the one fought in the 1970s, are undeniable.

Perhaps the most ominous sign of the entire affair is the uncertainty surrounding it. Once can hardly conclude which is worse: a true-blue guerrilla movement or an evil machination by some power faction within the system. If the latter turns out to be the case, the threat to Mexican stability would perhaps be greater. The resources, the boldness and ingenuity necessary to invent a guerrilla group of a hundred well-armed men, the complicity of a whole town and of urban contacts and the remarkably deft staging--it all seems in a way more threatening than a few hundred peasants with crude weapons.

In an essay in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, I write that the division of Mexico into two economies, societies and even polities--one a modern, viable minority plugged into the United States; the other a huge majority, left behind and domestically oriented--guarantees that there will be no mass social upheaval in Mexico but is also a recipe for perpetual instability on the margins. For one reason or another, the explosion in Guerrero seems to be part of this slow, downward spiral: too small to make a difference, too important to be neglected.