ROAD SHOW.

Mexico's simmering crisis

On March 21, almost 3 million Mexicans cast ballots in an unofficial national referendum organized by Zapatista rebels. The initiative was intended to jump-start the moribund peace process in the southern state of Chiapas. That process was initiated following the 1994 uprising there, but negotiations between the Zapatistas and the government of President Ernesto Zedillo have stalled. According to the New York Times (March 23), about 95 percent of the ballots cast supported the Zapatista initiative.

To promote interest in the referendum, Zapatista supporters fanned out across Mexico. The Economist (March 27), reported that the country"was awash with small, balaclava-clad Chiapans conducting a would-be plebiscite." Our contributor Alberto Huerta filed the following report from Guadalajara.

t is March 22. I am standing in downtown Guadalajara, in Liberation Square, next to a stage. A small crowd is awaiting the return of 300 Zapatista representatives from their meetings with local citizens. A party is planned, much like the one the previous weekend when the Zapatistas, in their trademark wool ski masks, first arrived to "consult" with and inform Guadalajarans about the ongoing crisis in Chiapas. At that gathering, their message had been muddled somewhat by all the noise in the square from balloon vendors and playing children. The Zapatistas had been made to seem like just another Saturday evening traveling sideshow. The following day, I had attended several churches where the Zapatistas had set up tables and were attempting to distribute pamphlets. There was not much "consultation" going on, only outstretched hands from impoverished Zapatistas asking for funds to help pay for the trip home.

After a peaceful demonstration through the heart of the city, the first Zapatistas finally appear at the square. Only a small gathering is there to greet them, composed mostly of journalists and photographers. The first twenty indios to arrive are very young women and children. The rally organizer invites the crowd to chant, "We are with you," and the indios are made to line up like circus exhibits to be photographed in their ski masks and their native costumes. They seem lost and alone, and talk to no one. When I remark to a reporter that the whole scene reminds me of some new form of tourist promotion, he and the organizer become angry and start shoving me. A foreigner, not wanting to get involved in an altercation, I back away.

I eventually start a conversation with a university student standing near some park benches. He has returned from Chiapas only a few months before, and agrees that the display in the square seems like a burlesque. In repeated national polls, the Mexican people have reiterated that the Zedillo government should resolve the Chiapas crisis and pull out the 72,000 soldiers, half of Mexico's standing army, now occupying the state.

The student informs me that Chiapas is volatile and isolated, and that even he, a citizen, had to show four separate forms of identity to enter certain areas (his university I.D., voter card, passport, and birth certificate). If you are a foreigner, he tells me, you are not allowed beyond designated tourist areas, such as San Cristobal de las Casas. If you stray, Mexican immigration invites you out of the country. (Seven U.S. citizens were recently asked to leave Mexico following a peace demonstration in Chiapas.) The student adds that on his trip to the village of La Trinitaria, he saw an army convoy that consisted of forty-two buses with armed soldiers, a tank, and a reconnaissance helicopter overhead. The indigenous Maya, he says, are harassed constantly at recurrent army checkpoints. I hear the same story over and over.

The so-called "national consultation" sponsored by the Zapatistas was supposed to have been a referendum on Mexican approval of the accords of San Andres, negotiated in February 1996 between the Zedillo government and the Zapatistas. Those accords were supported by the National Mediation Committee, of which Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia of Chiapas was a key player. But, after years of stalling and circumvention by the government, the bishop resigned, and the committee itself dissolved last year. That leaves only the government and the Zapatistas, with no compelling intermediary trying to bring them together.

As I watch, more Zapatistas arrive but the crowd in the square has dwindled. A puppet show by university students holds the attention of a few. It depicts a wrestling match between a Zapatista and President Zedillo, who is nicknamed here "The Butcher." My friend the student voices what I am thinking: "I hope these 300 Zapatistas go back tonight, that they make it safely, and that they do not suffer any reprisals from the army and 'The Butcher' in Chiapas. n

Alberto Huerta is associate professor in the department of modern and classical languages at the University of San Francisco in California.