New Chiapas Governor Initiates Process to Release Rebels

The newly inaugurated governor of Chiapas set in motion Friday the release of Zapatista prisoners, addressing the third and final rebel condition for resuming peace talks to resolve a 7-year-old uprising in the southern state.

Pablo Salazar, whose rainbow coalition of eight opposition parties ended the long reign of the Institutional Revolutionary Party here, delivered a scorching critique of the PRI’s handling of the Chiapas rebellion in his inaugural speech, and he made a simple plea: “No more spilled blood.”

The combination of Salazar’s detente efforts and the steps taken by new Mexican President Vicente Fox have forged a sudden and comprehensive peace initiative in Chiapas after years of deadlock and violence.

Rebel leader Subcommander Marcos a week ago set three conditions for resumption of talks with the government: release of Zapatista “political prisoners,” withdrawal of troops from the conflict zone and congressional adoption of a peace framework approved by negotiators but shelved by the PRI in 1996.

Fox attended Salazar’s inauguration in a packed auditorium in the Chiapas capital just a week after taking office as Mexico’s first non-PRI president in 71 years. In that week, Fox began pulling back troops and has submitted the peace framework to Congress, leaving only the Zapatista prisoner issue unacknowledged.

In his address, Salazar instructed his attorney general to set up mechanisms to examine each case “so that all prisoners of conscience are freed and unjust sentences against social leaders are canceled.”

Past PRI governments have denied that any political prisoners are in custody. The Zapatistas say 80 to 100 are being held.

Salazar did not say when prisoners might be released, and the extent of the army pullback remains unclear. The Zapatistas did not immediately respond to the package of state and federal initiatives.

But Fox said the measures taken in the past week are yielding results.

“Today there are fewer soldiers, there are fewer roadblocks, there are no military overflights or patrols--and all this without diminishing the security of Chiapan families,” Fox told a later gathering where he and Salazar signed a pledge to work jointly for peace.

In his speech, Salazar announced a package of measures designed to ease tensions between rebel supporters and PRI followers that have fueled periodic bloodshed in the Chiapas mountains and jungle since the conflict broke out Jan. 1, 1994.

The new governor immediately canceled a PRI program to create new municipalities in Chiapas, which the rebels had rejected. And he said he would appoint reconciliation commissioners in trouble spots like the towns of Chenalho and El Bosque.

More than 145 people died in the 12-day shooting war in 1994 before a cease-fire was declared; since then, many more have died in skirmishes between Zapatista supporters and local paramilitary groups loyal to the PRI government.

With his predecessor, Gov. Roberto Albores Guillen, sitting stone-faced nearby, Salazar accused past PRI governments of wasting time and fostering bloodshed by supporting the paramilitary groups.

Salazar, a schoolteacher, lawyer and former PRI senator who defected a year before his election victory in August, virtually defended the Zapatistas’ rebellion, waged to demand more political rights and social benefits for the state’s Maya people.

“Those who went to war wanted authentic democracy, true peace, freedom without shortcuts and a nation that embraces all,” Salazar said. The PRI government, in contrast, “stupidly tried to combat the rebels” by arming paramilitaries and encouraging “anti-Zapatista vandalism.”

Such words would never have been uttered by a governor in southern Mexico before Salazar’s victory. Indeed, until this year, none of the nine states south of Mexico City had had a governor from a party other than the PRI.

Fox shook hands with scores of Maya women in traditional embroidered blouses and men in plumed hats. He paused to discuss one man’s plea for the release of prisoners from the town of Chenalho, which includes the village of Acteal, where 45 pro-Zapatista peasants were slain in 1997.

“We are working on this as fast as we can,” Fox said.

Chiapas is riven not only by the Zapatista rebellion and paramilitary violence but also by religious and land conflicts. About one-third of the estimated 3.5 million Chiapans are Maya Indians, many of whom live in bitter poverty.