The Dark Side of Mexico’s Political Shift

While the government may consider the recent massacre of 45 peasants in Chiapas an outgrowth of local feuds, the bloodstained southern state represents to many analysts the dark side of Mexico’s political transition, one of many examples of old power structures disintegrating--and being replaced by chaos, not democracy.

If the national elections here in July represented a milestone, with the peaceful victory of many opposition politicians, the massacre last week in Chiapas underscored the perilous lag in the acceptance of democratic change in many rural areas, analysts say.

“One of the possibilities of Mexican politics [is] the consolidation of a ‘penthouse democracy’--an elected government which barely governs the surface of Mexico, while violence is sovereign in its interior,” prominent analyst Jesus Silva-Herzog Marquez wrote in a column Monday in the daily Reforma.

Mexicans have been outraged by the Dec. 22 massacre, in which gunmen attacked the village of Acteal. Still, despite a national outcry, there is little sign of any solution to the violence in Chiapas. The southern state has been riven by fighting between different groups since left-wing Zapatista rebels launched a brief uprising in January 1994 that killed at least 145 people.

President Ernesto Zedillo’s government has moved aggressively to arrest suspects accused in the latest violence. But there has been no sign of a breakthrough in the long-stalled peace talks with the Zapatista rebels, which is seen as essential to resolving dozens of other conflicts that have sprung up between groups sympathetic to the two sides.

“Because of this situation in Chiapas, the Zapatistas seem to have acquired a much more laid-back posture--’Why sit down [for talks] if I have the advantage? People in other countries think I’m right,’ ” said Antonio Ocaranza, a presidential spokesman, referring to the rebels’ international support.

Ugo Moreschi, a member of the Zapatistas’ civilian wing, retorted: “We see no will on the part of the government. Their only desire is to provoke war.”

Subcommander Marcos, the charismatic Zapatista leader, has gone so far as to accuse senior officials of responsibility in the killings.

The Zedillo government had largely treated the Chiapas conflict as a back-burner issue in recent months. Since the prolonged peace talks with the Zapatistas broke down in September 1996, many Mexicans had lost interest in the Chiapas problem--to the government’s relief.

“Chiapas has disappeared as a public theme,” a senior official told The Times in August. “It’s become a local, contained issue. It’s not a problem of national policy but of security.”

But, while Chiapas largely slipped off front pages, violence has simmered. Groups favoring the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, have clashed repeatedly with groups backing the Zapatistas. The disputes have become interwoven with economic, religious, political and other feuds.

Gradually, many towns have become polarized--so much so that some have set up pro-Zapatista “autonomous” governments, prompting retaliation from pro-government groups. The main suspect in last week’s massacre is the PRI mayor of the municipality that includes Acteal. Human rights groups agree that state and judicial authorities in Chiapas have turned a blind eye to violence by pro-PRI groups.

“This is a real wake-up call for Ernesto Zedillo, who thought he could solve Chiapas by ignoring it,” said Denise Dresser, a political scientist at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. “The problem simply will not go away.”

Many analysts say Chiapas is emblematic of the large chunk of Mexico that hasn’t embarked willingly on the process of democratic change. While power has changed hands peacefully in many parts of Mexico, that has rarely been the case in the rural southern states. In several of them, the ruling party is accused of clinging to power through a combination of electoral fraud, harassment of the opposition and an iron grip on the media.

While past presidents often intervened in state affairs, Zedillo has stayed above most local disputes. Critics accuse him of allowing undemocratic practices to persist.

“With traditional [political] discipline having been shattered, political bosses, barons and paramilitary squads are sprouting like mushrooms on the damp soil of the transition,” wrote Silva-Herzog Marquez. “Ernesto Zedillo will have to deal with the forces that, involuntarily, he promoted.”

The government and the PRI have condemned the Chiapas massacre and denied any role in it. But among the 40 local Indians charged so far in last week’s massacre is Jacinto Arias, the PRI mayor of Chenalho. Atty. Gen. Jorge Madrazo Cuellar said five witnesses accused Arias of providing automatic rifles used in the assault. In Mexico, such weapons are legally restricted to use by the army.

The attack with Kalashnikov rifles and other weapons also indicates that the stakes may be rising in what had previously been battles waged with machetes and small arms in Chiapas villages.

The massacre was a brutal reminder of the fierce divisions that still characterize the Mexican socioeconomic landscape. At a time when export-driven manufacturing in the center and north of the country has propelled Mexico toward a sizzling 7% economic growth rate this year, the south remains mired in poverty and underdevelopment.

In a 1995 report on communities in northern Chiapas, the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center described the demographics of several rural communities to show the poverty that prevails there. In the area of Tila, for example, a city of 48,000, only 11% of adults had finished elementary school, and 51% of those older than 15 were literate. The 1990 census said there were only 22 businesses in the town; nearly all adults worked for themselves, most as subsistence farmers. Just 9% earned a wage; they were all dayworkers or peons.

The massacre occurred in an area where old grudges still fester over claims to the few resources that do exist. The communities around the site had, for example, fought over control of a sand pit, the national attorney general’s office noted, and a PRI member was slain in the area Dec. 17.

The sporadic violence has driven many people to flee their homes in northern Chiapas over the past six months. “All the numbers for Chiapas are very low--employment, income--and on top of this are the political conflicts between the PRI and the [left-wing political party] PRD, and the state and federal government against the local opposition,” said economist Ismail Aguilar Barajas. “This shows that despite what the government says out loud, the PRI is finding it difficult to live with real opposition.”

But while financial markets shrugged off the massacre, even strengthening in recent days, Aguilar Barajas said the conflict could eventually affect Mexico’s economy--especially toward the end of Zedillo’s six-year term in 2000.