[SJMN] Armed with words instead of guns Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Wed, 10 Sep 1997 23:58:24 -0500 (CDT) * Armed with words instead of guns, they seek talks for Indian rights Zapatistas are on the move BY RICARDO SANDOVAL Mercury News Mexico City Bureau Published Wednesday, September 10, 1997, in the San Jose Mercury News SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico -- Amid growing tension and militarization in Chiapas, nearly 3,000 ski-masked Zapatista rebels and their supporters rolled through this scenic mountain town Tuesday, the first leg of a weeklong march aimed at restarting dormant peace talks in Mexico City. Hoping to recapture public support for their waning cause, the rebels marched into the main plaza unarmed, a marked contrast to January 1994, when they overran the town to draw attention to widespread poverty and injustice among Mayan Indians in rural Chiapas. The Zapatistas emerged from their forest and jungle enclaves this week to fill 50 buses with 1,111 rebels -- representing each of the villages in rebel-held territory. Thirty more buses followed, filled with civilian supporters and observers accompanying the rebels on their 750-mile march to Mexico City's central square. Tuesday night the caravan stopped in Juchitan, Oaxaca state, about 340 miles southeast of Mexico City. Unarmed marchers The marchers are expected to arrive Friday in the capital, where they will stay for five days. They will host weekend conferences on the plight of Mexico's Indians, and Tuesday will stage a rally for Mexican Independence Day. ``We have succeeded in waking up the nation and starting it toward democracy,'' said masked Heriberto, who follows the Zapatista practice of using only one name, just before the march. ``Now we want to improve our own situation and get the government to pull back the military. . . . We go to Mexico City unarmed; we want a peaceful solution.'' In Mexico City on Tuesday, Interior Minister Emilio Chauyffet defended himself in a raucous meeting in the lower house of Congress from accusations the government had turned a deaf ear to the rebels. He said the Zapatistas would be welcomed. ``The government sends its greetings and has said that the conversion of the Zapatista National Liberation Army into a political force would be welcomed,'' he said. In 1994, after the rebels' surprise attacks on several Chiapas towns -- and the deaths of some 500 rebels, Mexican troops and civilians -- it was the backing of average Mexicans that helped the Zapatistas bring the government quickly into peace talks and led to a truce that still holds. But despite the truce, the Mexican military has escalated its presence. There are an estimated 40,000 soldiers stationed at 200 outposts throughout the state. The rebels' departure after dawn Tuesday came just hours after an all-night rally on the square under the twin bell towers of San Cristobal's 400-year-old cathedral. An estimated 10,000 people, some 3,000 of them wearing dark ski masks and traditional Mayan clothes, listened as Zapatista leaders taunted Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon. ``Zedillo's corrupt government and his incompetent negotiators have done nothing to comply with the initial promises for social and cultural rights they made in 1995,'' said Commander Eziquiel. ``This bad government has ignored the peace process for a year, all while the military and police continue to surround us in an attempt to isolate us from the Mexican people.'' Marcos is absent Notably absent during the rally was Subcommander Marcos, the charismatic voice of the Zapatista movement, and its best-known icon. But there were enough chants of ``Viva Marcos!'' at the kickoff rally -- and a press release from the prolific subversive -- to remind the crowd of his presence. The motorized procession will stop for rallies and to pick up hitchhiking supporters in the central states of Oaxaca, Morelos and Puebla. Today, as in 1994, the Zapatistas' ire is the repression of native Indian rights in Chiapas. After the winter offensive that began New Year's Day 1994 -- the day the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect -- the Zapatistas became lightning rods for a resurgent civil rights movement by the nation's 9 million Indians. But support for the Zapatista cause has waned. The ragtag rebels, who number fewer than 2,000 and are surrounded by the Mexican army, are finished as threat to the government, said military analyst Salvador Caste~eda. Other analysts assert, however, that the force of the Zapatista complaints still resounds. ``The march is a demonstration of the movement's readiness for peace and negotiations, and is a demonstration of the rebels' will to continue this struggle,'' said Carlos Montemayor, a Mexican journalist who wrote a book about the Zapatista movement. Government officials would not comment on the march, except to say the rebels had the same rights to drive or walk along the country's highways as any other Mexican. And in his State of the Union address last week, Zedillo did not mention the Zapatistas, an omission some analysts said was a deliberate attempt to render the rebels irrelevant. But the Zapatista problem was raised in the response to Zedillo's speech by Porfirio Mu~oz Ledo, legislator from the opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution and new president of Mexico's lower house of Congress -- the Chamber of Deputies. Mu~oz Ledo and lawmakers from other opposition parties have urged Zedillo to send government negotiators back to Chiapas to resume peace talks. And with a new majority of opposition parties in Congress, the analyst suggested a negotiated solution with the Zapatistas might still come about. Montemayor said the Mexican government is waging a ``dirty war'' on the Zapatistas and their Mayan supporters -- ignoring them in public speeches and disregarding the stalled talks, even as more troops arrive in Chiapas and shootings continue in remote villages. Inside the steamy Lacandon jungle, Zapatista rebels say their people are living under conditions made worse by the stepped-up military presence and the arrival of paramilitary units funded by landowners. Surrounded by the army, most people in villages known to be supportive of the rebels refuse to talk about the conflict with outsiders and deny any knowledge of the Zapatista cause -- even as they stand under large murals protesting the military's presence and decrying the unsolved deaths of neighbors. Casting a suspicious eye on visitors, villagers complain of spies and private security guards -- called guardias blancas, or white guards. They blame military pressure for keeping them from tending their corn crops, and for covering up the deaths of friends. Like most people in Morelia, 50 miles southeast of San Cristobal, Miguel Perez Lopez laments the unsolved deaths in 1994 of three friends whose bodies were buried in shallow graves just after the Zapatistas retreated and the army moved in. He voices a desire shared by all of the townspeople. ``We're just hoping for justice someday,'' Perez said quietly. (c) 1996-7 Mercury Center. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-09.12.97-01:58:09-19382