In Chiapas, long shadows
Huerta, Alberto
Zedillo's bandwagon. They realize that party faithfulness is a prerequisite for legislative nominations, city council seats, bureaucratic posts, and favorable labor-management decisions. Besides,...
...In his sermon, Ruiz denounced the assassination and saw it as a threat to the peace process in Chiapas...
...Zedillo should win the August 21 presidential election thanks to the popularity of Salinas and Solidarity, an outpouring of sympathy for the martyred Colosio, the PRI's well-financed electoral machine, and a conservative electorate...
...Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, opened wide Mexico's unhealed wounds...
...be shut down...
...He charged that the military would soon begin an offensive against the EZLN, and he declared a red alert...
...After all, he bolted the PRI in 1987 and challenged Salinas for the presidency a year later...
...he said, and theorized that the candidate's assassination "was an internal affair to settle accounts...
...20 percent are older women, and the remaining 10 percent are older men and street youths...
...Commonweal 6 May 1994: 5...
...Added to this burden are 40,000 Guatemalan refugees...
...Most were convinced that twenty-three-year-old Mario Aburto Martinez had not acted alone...
...The Mexican public, for whom he is an unknown quantity, may also like the fact that the unpretentious Zedillo grew up in a lower middleclass family in Mexicali where, as a child, he sold old cans to In Chiapas, long shadows C nnsternation, confusion, and frustration characterize tlic prevailing mood in San Crist6bal de las Casas, Chiapas, where the insurrection of the indigenous Emiliano Zapata Liberaci6n Nacional movement (EZLN) blew open 1994...
...I decided then I would restrict my conversations with indigenous residents, lest I jeopardize them further...
...Now he is trying to make political hay out of the Indian-focused rebellion that erupted in the southern state of Chiapas on New Year's Day...
...Several weeks before the assassination, they had forcibly shut down seven Catholic churches in San Crist6bal...
...housed in various camps in the diocese...
...The "lone gunman," caught by an amateur video photographer...
...On Palm Sunday...
...Deep in the Lacandon Rain Forest of Chiapas...
...The shadows in Chiapas seemed to have grown unusually long...
...Now, four months later, sinister and mysterious forces seem to be stalking not only Chiapas but all Mexico...
...No wonder the bishop invited his fellow priests this Lent to enter into a kenosis-the suffering, passion, and death of the Lord Jesus Christ...
...Two thousand cafetaleros (coffee growers...
...Mexico (December 17, 1993, January 28, 1994...
...Seventy percent of those displaced by the January uprising are children under the age of thirteen...
...fnqueros (landowners), and ganaderos (cattlemen) have banded together and formed the Civic Front of San Crist6bal...
...The March 23 assassination of the popular presidential candidate of the PRI party...
...On March 25, Ruiz met with 150 priests, religious, and pastoral ministers to discuss his role in the ongoing peace process...
...Since March 13...
...El Tiempo...
...Subcommander Marcos of the EZLN, informed five hours after the PRI candidate had been gunned down, denied any involvement in the assassination...
...Every detail was replayed on Mexican television-which I watched during a recent visit to Chiapas-including the transfer of Colosio's body from Tijuana to Mexico City and finally back to the Sonoran desert town of Magdalena del Kino for burial...
...as I walked the deserted streets of San Crist6bal before returning to California, I heard the safety catch of a gun and the click of a round being inserted...
...Foreigners are advised that it is not a convenient time to be in Chiapas...
...To get there, a visitor must go through numerous checkpoints...
...I looked around but saw no one...
...He had "no beef' with Colosio...
...No one, he said, could be assured of safety, including reporters...
...unidentified armed men have arrived at the paper's offices each morning around 3 A.M., with the intention of intimidating vendors who are coming to pick up and distribute the paper...
...On the eve of Holy Week, Subcommander Marcos issued a statement that was ominous in tone...
...Bishop Ruiz is trying to feed and clothe 20.000 displaced indioc...
...Ruiz is now provided with a military guard that makes him almost inaccessible...
...is an associate professor at the University of San Francisco...
...They regard Cardenas, former governor of Michoacan state and son of a beloved, late president, as a Judas...
...Meanwhile...
...The system killed the candidate...
...The ministry of defense, concerned that another assassination plot might be brewing and aware of threats on Ruiz's life, sent three tanks to San Cristdbal's Parque Central...
...There is a strong military presence in and around the city...
...Ruiz has his hands full...
...ALBERTO HEJERTA Alberro Huerra, S.J...
...Those present voted unanimously that the bishop should continue as mediator for the EZLN...
...Mexicans said that for them, Holy Week had come one week early this year...
...alluded to a conspiracy and transformed the Colosio assassination into a Mexican version of the Kennedy tragedies...
...who has written previous reports for Commonweal from Chiapas...
...He immediately rushed back to San Crist6bal to offer a Mass for the deceased candidate...
...Besides, PRI veterans loathe Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, nominee of the left-nationalist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) and Zedillo's strongest opponent...
...Ruiz then prayed for the fallen candidate and urged a[l parties to keep open the channels of peace: Do not panic or give in to false alarms, he said...
...San Crist6bal remains in a state of siege...
...They posted signs calling for the ouster of Bishop Ruiz and his council of priests, and demanded that the local independent paper...
...Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia of San Crist6bal, who has been mediating the peace process in Chiapas, was in Guadalajara at the time of the assassination...
Vol. 121 • May 1994 • No. 9
