Mexico Defends Expulsion of Foreigners

Mexican immigration chief Alejandro Carrillo Castro recounted Marion Silke Ladiche’s protest to the police who arrested her: She insisted that she was just a German tourist seeing the flora and fauna of Chiapas and knew nothing about local politics. But Carrillo Castro then held up a color photograph showing her working alongside an Indian peasant and helping him paint a banner that proclaimed, “Headquarters of Municipality in Rebellion.”

The German was one of 12 foreigners who were summarily deported from Mexico on Sunday, a day after they were arrested along with nine Indian leaders in a Chiapas hamlet east of the regional center, San Cristobal de las Casas. Declaring the village “autonomous,” the Indians last week set up rival municipal operations loyal to the Zapatista rebels and renamed the community after Ricardo Flores Magon, an anarchist hero and an instigator of the 1910 Mexican Revolution.

The government said the 12 ejected foreigners were caught red-handed helping the municipal insurrection. On Wednesday, Mexico announced that it had expelled an additional three foreigners, all from Norway, for having joined villagers in the southern state in manning a rebel roadblock.

The recent wave of deportations has provoked widespread criticism within Mexico and abroad, including allegations of rising xenophobia and suggestions that this nation wants to hide what is happening in Chiapas from the eyes of the world.

Carrillo Castro on Wednesday explained to several foreign journalists his government’s policy toward the thousands of foreigners who come to the mountainous, exotic state of Chiapas to see the conflict area firsthand, to serve as human rights “observers” or, in some cases, to get more directly involved in the uprising.

While attention has focused on the expulsions, Carrillo Castro noted that Mexico has issued more than 4,400 “observer” visas to members of nongovernmental organizations to work in Chiapas, which he said shows the country’s willingness to open itself to international scrutiny.

What is forbidden, he said, is to enter the country on a tourist visa and then do something else, such as work as an observer or, far more seriously, take part in illegal activities such as setting up rival local authorities.

Last year, 204 foreigners were told to leave the country within a few days for violating their visas, often for serving as observers in Chiapas while on tourist visas. An additional 12 people were summarily deported, usually for alleged criminal activity.

“There are young men and women who are here doing revolutionary tourism, and sometimes in good faith--they are taking part in a romantic adventure,” Carrillo Castro said. Others “have angelic faces” but have more sinister motives, and may even have ties to terrorist organizations in Spain and elsewhere, he said.

Critics have often derided as wishful thinking the government’s suggestions that left-wing foreigners are playing an important role in the Chiapas conflict. They say such notions downplay the legitimate grievances that provoked the Zapatista rebellion.

Three of the foreigners expelled Sunday were Americans, who later were quoted as saying they happened to be staying overnight in the town when more than 800 police and soldiers swept in to round up the leaders of the local rebellion.

The deportations form part of a crackdown against what the government calls attempts to subvert the rule of law and official institutions in the state. While a cease-fire has been in effect since shortly after the Indians launched their uprising in January 1994, pro-Zapatista communities have quietly set up more than 30 alternative local administrations, directly challenging pro-government local authorities.

All 12 foreigners expelled over the weekend were deported under a constitutional provision that bars foreigners from any involvement in Mexican politics. It was the first time since the Chiapas rebellion began that foreigners have been expelled on such grounds, which mean they can never return to Mexico.

Foreign Minister Rosario Green was especially blunt in defending the expulsions, saying Monday that Mexico will not provide refuge to those who “want to destroy the institutions legally constituted by Mexicans. . . . It seems to me that anyone who went to another country to aid the creation of a parallel authority--something which is absolutely illegal--would find themselves with greater difficulties than an expulsion.”

Carrillo Castro said the government could have arrested the foreigners, charged them and put them on trial, as it is doing with the Mexicans arrested in the case, rather than expel them.

He said the government will continue to issue visas granting “observer” status to those who can show they belong to a nongovernmental organization. About 20 clerics from Pastors for Peace, based in New York, are being issued such visas and will visit soon, he said.