Planned Zapatista-Congress Talks a Minefield

Even though the negotiators managed to reach a last-minute agreement to continue their talks, no one involved with this week’s planned meeting between Zapatista rebels and Mexican legislators is under any illusion about the difficulty of the road ahead.

Details of how the negotiations for an Indian rights law will proceed, who will represent the two sides and the timetable for an accord are unknown, and could present serious sticking points. Second-guessing has already begun about whether the meeting scheduled for Wednesday should even take place.

President Vicente Fox’s own party voted against letting the Zapatistas speak to members of the lower house of Congress, and Fox has been accused by his party’s leaders of caving in to demands from rebel leader Subcommander Marcos. Some indigenous groups opposed to the Zapatistas also are demanding a place at the table.

Even some supporters of the talks and an Indian rights law lament the timing. They fear the negotiations could take up so much of the legislators’ time that other pressing issues, including tax and energy reform and a new freedom of information law, will be shunted aside before the session ends April 15.

In an event likely to transfix the nation, a rebel contingent including the enigmatic Marcos is to meet with legislators Wednesday on the main floor of the Congress to set a framework for future negotiations on an indigenous rights bill.

The Zapatistas arrived in Mexico City earlier this month after a two-week trek from the southernmost state of Chiapas, demanding a congressional audience. After a daily exchange of public denunciations and finally threats by Marcos that he would go back to Chiapas, legislators on Thursday voted 220 to 210 to give them the floor.

Legislators in essence overrode a law that bars anyone except elected representatives from speaking to Congress. They officially invited the Zapatistas to address a meeting of two commissions, but most legislators are expected to attend.

Fox’s National Action Party, or PAN, demanded first that the meetings take place outside Congress and then that the Zapatistas take off their trademark masks during any encounter. PAN members voted solidly against inviting the Zapatistas, but a majority of non-PAN deputies carried the vote.

“It seems that what was important to the Zapatistas was to break the symbol of legality of the Congress. It’s part of a very effective strategy we’ve seen since January 1994 to show how fragile the political institutions of Mexico are,” said Carlos Elizondo Mayer-Serra, general director of the Mexico City-based Center for Economic Research and Teaching.

Soon after Fox was inaugurated in December, he appealed for reconciliation with the Zapatistas, who have been at war with the government since an uprising on Jan. 1, 1994. The rebels set three conditions for talks: an indigenous rights law, release of Zapatista prisoners and the closure of seven army bases in Chiapas.

Fox promised to meet the demands and last week ordered the closing of the last three army bases. His aides complained that the Zapatistas had made no reciprocal moves.

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Times researcher Rafael Aguirre contributed to this report.