The UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, raised a political storm in Mexico this week by hinting at a possible UN role in settling the increasingly violent conflict in Chiapas, south-east Mexico. "This is a conflict between Mexicans that will be resolved by Mexicans," responded Mexico's Foreign Minister, Mr Rosario Green.The prospect of international mediation was welcomed by dozens of Mexican human rights organisations, who fear further bloodshed in Chiapas since the national mediation body (CONAI) dissolved itself last month. CONAI cited persecution of its chief representative, Bishop Samuel Ruiz, as the reason for its dissolution. The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) has respected a ceasefire negotiated in January 1994 but community pressure has grown on the guerrillas to respond to what is seen as unpunished violence by the army, police and paramilitaries.
The conflict appeared close to resolution when rebel and government officials signed a peace accord in February 1996, but the President, Mr Ernesto Zedillo, has since disowned the accord and ordered troop advances against rebel villages.State violence has spread to other regions where poverty and repression have bred new guerrilla organisations, notably in Guerrero state.Survivors of a massacre of 11 Indian peasants in El Charco village in Guerrero on June 7th described 90 minutes of terror in which 300 soldiers fired on 42 people hiding in a schoolroom. The first group of unarmed civilians surrendered and left the building, arms above their heads. But two were immediately shot dead. Members of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) then followed, pleading for clemency, but were executed on the spot.The army issued an official statement claiming soldiers fired in self-defence."How can they expect us to believe that the EPR members were armed with 14 AK47s, that the shoot-out lasted six hours, yet not a single soldier was injured?" asks Mr Rafael Alvarez, a spokesman for a local human rights group.A local bricklayer was hired to restore glass and re-plaster the walls, and to mop up pools of blood before journalists arrived. The local press found no evidence of bullets fired from within the schoolroom.The Mexican government has been angered by past reports in US newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, of open rallies by the EPR in villages across Guerrero.Hundreds of peasants cheered armed rebels who set up temporary roadblocks, ridiculing the government's dismissal of the group as "armed pantomime". In the neighbouring state of Chiapas, soldiers and police used tanks, bazookas and helicopters to dismantle an autonomous rebel village on June 10th, killing eight Zapatista supporters.Once more survivors contradicted the official version, claiming five of the dead had been taken away alive by the army and returned a day later, their bodies mutilated and unrecognisable.President Zedillo has presided over an unprecedented militarisation of the entire country with generals replacing police chiefs in Mexico City and troops sandbagged into towns and villages throughout rural Mexico.In a country where 40 million people live beneath the poverty line and elections are weighted heavily toward the ruling party, the Zapatista movement offers an attractive alternative to institutional politics.The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, issued a statement last month calling on the Mexican government to scale back the militarisation of Chiapas and work towards a peaceful outcome to the conflict."There is a state policy of annihilation by degrees," commented Mr Carlos Monsivais, a leading Mexican social analyst, "which aims to induce amnesia and apathy through the slow accumulation of corpses."A US State Department report in 1995 described Mexican troops as unprepared to face Zapatista rebels in prolonged guerrilla warfare. Since then hundreds of soldiers have received training in the US, while dozens more attend the infamous "Kaibil" army school based in Guatemala."Kaibil" troops carried out massacres in Guatemala's Indian villages during the 1980s, leaving thousands dead in an underreported ethnic cleansing.A CIA-funded Mexican army battalion, the Special Airborne Troops (GAFE), has also been set up. The GAFE is attached in 100 man units to regional barracks and has been involved in several controversial incidents.