Mexican Rebels Seek Backing in Nationwide Referendum

Thousands of masked Zapatista rebels slipped out of their jungle hide-outs in the southern state of Chiapas and took up strategic positions Sunday in cities and towns across Mexico.

Their mission: to carry out an unofficial referendum at makeshift voting tables in large cities, town squares and village markets, asking ordinary Mexicans to declare their support for Indian rights--and for resuming long-stalled peace negotiations on the Chiapas conflict.

Civilian sympathizers set up about 9,000 polling booths in all 31 states and the Mexico City Federal District, and about 5,000 Maya Indians from the Zapatista National Liberation Army were sent from Chiapas to assist. Supporters in Mexico and abroad also were casting votes via the Internet.

Organizers predicted that more than 1 million people would take part in the festive, daylong initiative, and dozens of people lined up at some downtown Mexico City voting booths, although other tables had only a trickle of supporters. Preliminary turnout figures were expected Sunday night from an independent polling agency assisting with the count.

While the outcome of the referendum was a foregone conclusion, the Zapatistas could use the expected public endorsement of their cause to pressure the government to break a 30-month deadlock in peace negotiations.

Although the government dismissed the exercise as “absurd” and a transparent propaganda maneuver, officials assured the rebels safe conduct, and they moved about freely in most towns--in contrast to the army siege at their encampments every day in Chiapas. The rebels staged a bloody 10-day uprising for Indian rights in January 1994 that sputtered into a sullen cease-fire interrupted by occasional bloody clashes.

On the edge of Mexico City’s immense, garbage-strewn bedroom suburb of Nezahualcoyotl, some passersby watched with curiosity as masked insurgents mingled at a street-corner voting table with a few neighbors who were waiting to cast ballots. The suburb, named for an Aztec poet-king of the 1400s, is itself home to many indigenous people who have migrated to the metropolis from rural villages.

“They don’t even know how to read, yet they have shaken our consciences,” Angel Contreras, a schoolteacher, said of the Zapatistas. “A strong Zapatista movement has developed here in these few days.”

A total of 147 booths were set up around Neza, as it is called here, and 24 Zapatistas were deployed here during the days leading up to the ballot, taking part in rallies and talks.

For its part, the government has repeatedly appealed to the rebels to return to direct talks and abandon preconditions. The rebels insist, for instance, that an accord on indigenous rights, agreed to in early 1996 but stalled because of differing interpretations, be implemented before further talks proceed.

Meanwhile, President Ernesto Zedillo and other officials have been mounting their own publicity campaign, touting major spending and job-creation programs in Chiapas, one of Mexico’s poorest states. At the same time, the state government is restructuring towns in Chiapas in ways that could undermine pro-Zapatista “autonomous municipalities.”

Facing such pressures, the wry, pipe-smoking Zapatista leader “Subcommander Marcos” has sought to revive public and international support through measures such as the referendum. Some analysts suspect that Marcos is waiting for the 2000 election, in the hope that an opposition party more sympathetic to his cause will defeat the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Even in the days before Sunday’s vote, the hooded rebels managed some publicity coups, playing a soccer match with an over-35 team and having coffee at the same Mexico City cafe where revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata once dined.

The referendum questions were worded to elicit declarations of support not just for the Zapatistas in Chiapas but “for the recognition of the rights of the Indian peoples and for an end to the war of extermination.” About 10 million of Mexico’s 95 million people are full-blooded indigenous people like the Mayas of Chiapas, and virtually all the rest are of mixed Indian and Spanish blood.

In the central square in Mexico City known as the Zocalo, the rebels set up voting tables. Volunteers applied indelible ink to voters’ thumbs to keep them from casting ballots more than once, and ID cards had to be produced, but few of the rigors of a real election were observed--and anybody 12 years or older could participate.