Mayor Is Charged in Chiapas Massacre

Authorities on Saturday night charged the mayor of this mountain community with murder, also alleging that he provided the weapons used to slaughter 45 villagers and then tried to cover up the killings.

Jacinto Arias Cruz and 23 supporters from villages near the Maya hamlet of Acteal were formally charged with homicide, causing injuries and illegal association. They were taken to a prison in the Chiapas state capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez.

Arias Cruz is mayor of Chenalho municipality, which includes both Acteal and Los Chorros, where many of those arrested live.

An official with the federal attorney general’s office, Jose Luis Ramos Rivera, said Arias Cruz lied to investigators about his knowledge of the massacre. He said Arias Cruz claimed to have learned Tuesday of the massacre, but an entry in a notebook dated Monday recorded the killing of the villagers.

Ramos Rivera, at a news conference in Tuxtla Gutierrez, also said Arias Cruz tried to cover up the massacre, bringing together the participants and briefing them on what to tell authorities.

“The participation of the municipal president consisted of instigating [the massacre] and providing the weapons and later trying to make some kind of agreement with those involved to get them together on their version, using his own words, about the problem that was happening,” he said.

Sixteen other people were formally charged with murder Friday night, bringing to 40 the number of villagers from the Chenalho area now under arrest for the massacre. In addition, three minors have been remanded to juvenile custody.

Masked gunmen wearing uniforms showed up in Acteal on Monday, methodically gunning down villagers--mostly women and children--with arms ranging from .22-caliber rifles to AK-47 assault weapons. Thirty-one people were injured in the attack.

The massacre has outraged Mexicans and brought calls for the resignation of the governor, the Interior secretary--even President Ernesto Zedillo.

Rebels of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, who rose up in January 1994 to demand rights for Chiapas’ poor Indians, issued a statement Saturday night accusing the federal government of condoning the massacre.

The men charged in the massacre are all Indians from communities in Chenalho. Speakers of the Maya language Tzotzil, as were their alleged victims, they also, like them, farmed subsistence plots of land.

Human rights activists say the killings were probably carried out to strengthen the ruling party’s political control in a county split between government supporters and sympathizers of the Zapatista rebels.