Villagers in Chiapas Fear the Violence Will Escalate

It started at dawn. Truckload after truckload of the feared state police and Mexican army roared onto a ridge above this rural village. To Virginia Diaz, a mother of 11, there was only one thing to do: Flee and hope for the best.

It wasn’t enough. She and her husband were reunited Thursday with 10 of their children separated in the scramble. But their son Adolfo, 20, still had not turned up. As hours dragged on, Diaz feared that he had become one of the victims in the worst fighting in four years between Mexican security forces and Zapatista rebels.

Adolfo and his friends “were running away and had a clash” with police and soldiers who surrounded the town a day before, said Diaz, a plump woman in an embroidered Indian blouse. “Now,” she wept, “he’s dead.”

The Diaz family was ensnared in fighting this week that left nine dead and six wounded and appeared to mark a new phase in the conflict in Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state. For four years, government forces and the left-wing Zapatista rebels stuck to a cease-fire, exercising notable self-discipline. But they abandoned that restraint this week in what could be a harbinger of greater bloodshed.

“The dynamic of war is reaching the point where they [the Zapatistas] are responding militarily,” said the Rev. Pablo Romo, a Catholic priest and human rights activist who closely follows the situation in pro-Zapatista communities.

The Zapatistas burst to prominence in January 1994, launching an offensive that claimed 145 lives in 10 days before a cease-fire took hold. Their campaign for Indian rights and their charismatic leader, Subcommander Marcos, have given them an importance far beyond their slight military means.

All-out battles are unlikely to revive--for now, anyway. The military and police dramatically reduced their presence after Wednesday’s clashes in remote villages in the municipality of El Bosque, about 50 miles from the regional center of San Cristobal de las Casas.

But local people are afraid the violence will escalate. The situation turned ominous and explosive just days after Catholic Bishop Samuel Ruiz, a key mediator, quit and accused the government of thwarting peace talks.

Wednesday’s clashes occurred as authorities carried out a new crackdown on Zapatista supporters and the “autonomous” governments they have proclaimed in several county seats, including El Bosque.

While it once turned a blind eye to some irregularities in sensitive pro-Zapatista communities, the government is now fighting back.

That was the case in Union Progreso. After ambushes that left three government supporters dead in the region in recent weeks, authorities decided to send police to arrest suspects here and in another pro-Zapatista village, Chavajeval. “We knew they’d be harassed,” said Eduardo Montoya, the assistant state prosecutor, in an interview Friday.

So the officers had reinforcements. Hundreds of them. Police, soldiers carrying semiautomatic rifles and what appeared to be grenade launchers, and helicopters.

According to the government, the forces swiftly came under fire in both hamlets. In Union Progreso, three state police officers were wounded as shots rang out from the hillsides, the state prosecutor’s office said. Another police officer was killed in Chavajeval. Returning fire, security forces killed eight attackers, authorities say--most wearing Zapatista rebel uniforms.

In Union Progreso, residents scoffed at the official version. All but a handful of locals fled as security forces surrounded the town, they said. As the 28 men who remained were forced to lie face down on the ground, they heard the crackle of a firefight in the hills. Villagers said seven missing local youths had apparently been killed in the battle; the government said five villagers were dead.

“We are only sympathizers” of the Zapatistas, said Mario Sanchez Perez, a local farmer, echoing a widely voiced opinion. “We don’t belong to an armed group.”

But one local youth said nine young villagers belonging to the Zapatista “militia,” a sort of armed reserve force, had fought authorities. “My friends said they went to defend the pueblo,” he said.

If the versions of the fighting differed, there is little doubt about what happened next. Security forces raided the tiny brick homes in Union Progreso, hurling clothes to the floor and breaking bed frames. The village’s only store was a wreck late this week, littered with cookies, ripped bags of laundry detergent and empty Coke bottles.

“The government sent its people, its security forces, to finish off everything,” said Sanchez Perez, shaking his head at the damage. “The government always makes us poorer, and we have nothing.”

Montoya, the state official whose office coordinated the operation, seemed unaware of the widespread damage. “I hope whoever was affected will present a complaint,” he said.

The four-year cease-fire between the army and rebels has hardly been a love fest. In fact, there have been frequent tensions. But the conflicts differed from the fighting this week.

In the past few years, for example, pro-Zapatista and pro-government groups have killed and expelled opponents from local villages. The most serious such attack was the December massacre of 45 people in Acteal, blamed on pro-government paramilitaries.

But the army and the rebels have generally shown restraint and discipline, rarely firing on each other directly--until now.

Romo, the human rights activist, said the clashes were a sign that the Zapatistas had reached their last straw. Their patience had been worn thin, he said, by a recent crackdown on pro-rebel foreigners and Catholic figures and by the government’s use of military-style operations to dissolve “autonomous” rebel governments.

Those actions came atop the Acteal massacre and amid a long stalemate in negotiations. The Zapatistas are no longer even talking to peace mediators. “If these operations continue, there will be more clashes,” Romo predicted.

The government tells a different story. Montoya said Zapatista supporters in the area of the clashes were armed and cocky, carrying out their own justice against opponents and becoming an increasing threat to authorities and to the peace. The pro-government supporters in the nearby village of Los Platanos felt under siege, he said.

“They said the authorities had to act and detain those responsible, or they would arm themselves with whatever they had at hand” and exact revenge, he said.

“We’re not against the Zapatistas,” Montoya added, hinting that his office will soon act to restrain the state’s armed pro-government groups too. They are rarely punished, according to human rights groups.

President Ernesto Zedillo, in a visit to the region Friday, reaffirmed his commitment to a peaceful solution to the Chiapas conflict. But in Union Progreso, peace seemed as far away as ever. Residents seethed over the authorities’ show of force and the sacking of their homes. Virginia Diaz bitterly wondered if she’d ever see her son again--dead or alive.

She did not know that the bodies of fighting victims were being held in the state capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez, a five-hour trip away. Even if she had known, a trip to possibly identify her son’s body would have been difficult. There is no public transportation to Union Progreso, separated from the highway by a four-mile, rock-strewn path.

By Friday, only one of the nine bodies from Wednesday’s clash--the police fatality--had been identified. Authorities said the rest will be buried in an unmarked grave.