Chiapas Gunmen Kill at Least 45 Churchgoers

Dozens of gunmen fired on churchgoers who were praying for peace in a remote Mexican village, killing at least 45 people--including 14 children and a baby--in a brutal escalation of the 4-year-old conflict in the southern state of Chiapas, officials confirmed Tuesday.

President Ernesto Zedillo, in a nationally televised address, described the attack as a “cruel, absurd, unacceptable criminal act” and ordered the national attorney general to take jurisdiction of the investigation from state authorities--an unusual federal intervention signaling his anger over the unceasing violence in Chiapas.

The attack, which occurred at midday Monday in the village of Acteal, was the worst outbreak of violence in Chiapas since a guerrilla uprising there claimed at least 145 lives after days of fighting in January 1994. The government and Zapatista rebels agreed then to discuss their differences, resulting in a precarious, oft-violated cease-fire.

This pre-Christmas massacre heightens tensions in Chiapas at a time of growing frustration over the yearlong deadlock in the talks, which involve such emotional issues as land reform and local autonomy.

Initial accounts from the village on Tuesday described the attackers as followers of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, although the PRI has denied any support for the many armed groups that have skirmished repeatedly in recent weeks with supporters of the Zapatistas.

The victims were said to be sympathizers of the Zapatistas, who had established an unofficial, rival government in the district.

The village, in the Chenalho district north of the Zapatista stronghold of San Cristobal de las Casas, is one of several contested areas where pro-government and pro-guerrilla groups have waged fierce struggles for influence, often over such hometown issues as control of soft-drink franchises.

But the viciousness of Monday’s violence--which also left at least 20 people wounded, many by machetes--stunned Mexicans, forcing them to focus their attention once again on the festering Chiapas conflict.

Witnesses were quoted as saying they were praying in the wood-sided Acteal church when gunfire ripped through the village.

Juan Vazquez Luna, 15, told the Associated Press that he and other churchgoers saw 70 or so men firing AK-47 assault rifles at residents outside the church. He said the gunmen then chased those who tried to flee down a mountainside. Many of the victims were gunned down on the banks of a river below the town.

Vazquez said his mother, father and four sisters were killed, and three other siblings were wounded.

“They didn’t respect anyone--not old people, not children, nobody,” said Ernesto Mendez Paciencia, 18, a coffee farmer whose two brothers, 8 and 11, were killed.

Radio reports said the attackers wiped out whole families in apparent random shootings. Twenty-one of the victims were women.

Reuters news service reported that many victims had camped in Acteal in recent months to escape violence elsewhere in the state.

One witness said the attackers wore ski masks and others covered their faces with red handkerchiefs. But the victims were quoted as saying they recognized the attackers as “PRI-istas.”

Victims said the police took hours to arrive after the assault.

Zedillo said the incident demonstrated that the Chiapas state government “has insufficient resources to achieve the security conditions that the people require.”

He said the federal government, instead, would provide all necessary means to halt the violence.

He added that the national government “reaffirms its willingness to arrive at agreements that, within the framework of the constitution, establish the conditions to allow Chiapas to have peace and resolve its social problems and the old injustices that are at the root of many of the acts of violence that the people of Chiapas have suffered.”

A presidential aide said Zedillo’s decision to assign the investigation to the federal government showed his anger at the inability of all sides to find long-term solutions, as well as his determination to push the talks forward.

Mexico’s central government rarely intervenes in a matter where a state has jurisdiction.

But human rights organizations had long pressed for just such a federal role, given the Chiapas government’s tacit support for anti-Zapatista violence, said Joel Solomon, a researcher with the independent group Human Rights Watch / Americas.

“In many places in Chiapas, the government turns a blind eye to violent acts committed by its supporters but throws the weight of the state against those opposition members who do or are accused of having committed violent acts,” Solomon said in a telephone interview from Washington. “So there is really a double standard at play, and it has really aided to quite a degree the deterioration of the situation.”

Zedillo concluded his address by saying: “The tragedy which we mourn today with all our pain, far from sowing more hatred and division among the Chiapans, should push all of us toward the path of rejecting violence, of understanding and of agreements for peace and social justice in the entire state of Chiapas.”

The conflict in northern Chiapas took a new turn in November. Bishop Samuel Ruiz of Chiapas, Mexico’s best-known bishop and a prominent advocate of Indian rights, escaped unhurt, but two companions were wounded when gunmen fired at his convoy as it traveled through a pro-government stronghold. The bishop’s office blamed that attack on Peace and Justice, one of the loose-knit armed groups associated with the PRI.

More than 100 people have been killed since the cease-fire took effect after the 1994 uprising. In recent weeks, an estimated 6,000 people have fled the region to seek refuge from violence.

Besides political jockeying, complex factors such as economic competition and religious antagonisms between Roman Catholics and Protestant evangelists have often been blamed in the attacks.

Ruiz told a radio interviewer after Monday’s massacre: “It’s an incomprehensible situation in which we have not been able to stop the violence.”