Mexico's Other Rebels
WITT, ADDISON DE
Widening the Fray Mexico's Other Rebels By Addison De Witt THE SUMMER of 1996 was, in its own way, Mexico's Summer of Sam. On August 29, a well-armed guerrilla group that calls itself the...
...The EPR and its offshoots sprang from the party's ranks...
...Last December 1, on the eve of a visit by then president-elect Vicente Fox to the southern state of Oaxaca, a band of masked FARP guerrillas invaded the small Oaxaca mountain community of Nazareno Etla...
...His troubles will inevitably escalate if he is increasingly perceived as a charismatic figure who talks a good fight but fails to deliver...
...By 1979, far Left students and peasant leaders formed a political party that was clumsily named Clandestine Union of the Poor Workers Revolutionary Party (PROCUP...
...Soldiers have visited communities believed to be sympathetic to the guerrillas and offered locals a five-pound basket containing rice, beans, sugar, flour, and cooking oil in exchange for a firearm...
...Rejecting any solution except violent overthrow of the Mexican government, it seemed in effect to be saying to Marcos, "You're the media rebels...
...The guerrilla leader's body is currently buried near where he fell in combat, but the exact location has been declared a "military secret...
...There is reason to suspect, though, that the report is inflated and may have been part of a PFP effort to increase its budget...
...They have even passed out flyers in the streets of Acapulco...
...A hair-raising personal account of the 1970s "dirty war" is currently being provided by David Cabanas, Lucio's brother...
...Interior Undersecretary Arturo Nunez described it as "a radical group which...
...Early on the morning of March 15,2000, it launched a mortar attack against the Mexico City headquarters of the Federal Preventive Police...
...The Villista EVRP has chosen the path of urban insurrection, although Pancho Villa spent much of his career as a marauder in the Chihuahua sierra...
...we're the real rebels...
...By contrast, the EPR seemed about as cuddly as the Khmer Rouge, and potentially as dangerous...
...But this may be the calm before the storm...
...He has made an emotional appeal to President Fox to release the remains of his brother to the family...
...Conservative Cardinal Juan Sandoval Ifiiguez declared it had taken arms "not to remedy the needs of the people, but to serve illegitimate interests...
...This discord predictably invited comparisons between the "good" rebels of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the "bad" rebels of EPR...
...In prosperous Northern Mexico, where there has been no guerrilla problem since Pancho Villa, some groups are probably functioning in the tradition of the comic strip Robbing Hood—that is, engaging in common criminal behavior, dealing drugs, and sprucing up their image with an idealistic sounding name and the spurious aura of Sherwood Forest...
...The Subcomandante was particularly annoyed by EPR intrusions into his Chiapas bailiwick: "Why do you operate a propaganda apparatus in Chiapas when you have shown the ability to move about in many parts of Mexico...
...They are beginning to agree with his political foes that his policies amount not to reforma but reformón, a disparaging term meaning "so-called reform...
...No violence occurred at the time, but two months later they attacked Puerto Marqués...
...The ratification process is therefore expected to take many months...
...naval base and maritime terminal were put under guard...
...Dominguez also complained that the soldiers treated villagers "like gang members and delinquents...
...The EPR's political offspring emerged in quick succession: ERPI in January 1998...
...TODAY, as the summer of '96 insurgency approaches its fifth anniversary, the potentially most explosive development is the current roiling controversy over the Indian rights bill passed by Congress on April 28...
...His associates fired shots in the air to honor Lucio Cabanas, whom they still acknowledge as their "supreme commander...
...His controversial tax plan has been put on the shelf by the national Congress because of sharp criticism from both the Right and Left...
...In such circumstances Mexico could find itself facing a resurgence of la violencia and a return to the bad old days of 1996...
...It calls for forcible seizure of power, establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat, and restructuring Mexico along Marxist-Leninist-Maoist lines—rhetoric that doesn't play too well these days...
...To memorialize the event, armed masked men appeared in Aguas Biancas and formally announced their identity as a militant rebel force...
...Late last December a Left-wing Mexico City weekly somehow obtained what it said was a secret report prepared by the intelligence unit of the Federal Preventive Police (PFP...
...Two months later its target was a government office in the Mexico City suburb of Xochimilco...
...An intensification of security measures took place that had not been seen since the Zapatista uprising of early 1994...
...The plutocrats directly and indirectly involved in Mexico's tourism industry had nightmares about the public relations disaster that might ensue if foreign visitors were assaulted or abducted for ransom by sinister masked figures toting state-of-theart weaponry...
...Because each of Mexico's states must vote to ratify the measure (as well as decide how to implement it), the legislatures are currently besieged by Indian rights groups lobbying them to reject the law...
...His modern day disciples have indicated that they disagree with the EPR's predominantly rural approach...
...Urban pockets of discontent, like the 23rd of September Communist League, also formed...
...So, leaving aside the Zapatistas, after sifting through a confused jumble of information and misinformation one can safely narrow the field to four significant rebel outfits...
...Thirteen people were killed...
...On October 19, 1999, ERPI's founding members, the husband and wife team of Jacobo Silva (Comandante "Antonio") and Gloria Arenas (Colonel "Aurora"), were arrested by PFP agents...
...The EPR itself was founded on June 28, 1996, the first anniversary of a notorious massacre in the village of Aguas Biancas, where 22 unarmed peasant farmers were shot down by police on their way to a peaceful demonstration...
...Highway checkpoints were set up as far away as Guadalajara...
...Yet that may be as much a function of mathematics as ideology...
...The EVRP has fired mortars at Mexico City's periferico (beltway) and at the Santa Lucia air base on the Federal District's northeastern outskirts...
...President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon was quick to respond to his fat cat supporters' entreaties...
...A witty, pipe-smoking subcomandante, diminutive Indian guérilleros, friendly accessibility to foreigners—all these characteristics combined to make the Zapatistas everybody's favorite revolutionaries...
...They also issued statements, published in several Left-wingperiodicals, that they had been beaten and subjected to repeated electric shock sessions, with Arenas suffering the additional indignity of being strip-searched and subjected to anal inspection...
...Moreover, in this high-tech age any teen can get on the Internet and declare himself the comandante of, say, the Popular United Democratic Anti-Fascist People's Front...
...In a response to an EPR appeal for joint action, he replied: "We don't wantyourhelp...
...Marcos' followers—who have not fired a shot in anger since January 12,1994—are allowed safe passage to Mexico City to present their views before Congress...
...The FARP has taken the broadest approach, which could be described as both rural and urban...
...radio and television reports of the assault said two children who were playing nearby had been injured...
...Maria Inés Cabanas, a distant cousin who never knew Lucio, has said in a statement to the Attorney General's off ice that her husband and four children were taken away and never seen again simply because of the family connection...
...Through their lawyers, the captives claimed they were both abducted—Silva in Mexico City and Arenas at home in San Luis Potosi...
...He contends that 75 per cent of the victims were completely innocent...
...Out of Mexico's equivalent of Kent State emerged such Quantrillesque figures as Genaro Vásquez and Lucio Cabanas, both of whom dramatically rose and fell in the southern sierra...
...The most telling rebuke came from Marcos...
...During the term of Echeverria's successor, José Lopez Portillo, 23rd of September made an unsuccessful attempt to kidnap his sister Margarita...
...As one woman, a journalist from New York, put it, "They're so cuddly you want to wrap them in your arms...
...A convoy of military vehicles was deployed all along the Costa Alegre,thatparadise-like stretch of beach between Puerto Vallarta and the more southerly vacation spot of Manzanillo...
...EVRP in December 1999...
...The speaker, Major "Vinicio," denounced the "neoliberal and managerial proposals of foxismo...
...The cops are widely believed to have planted weapons on corpses as part of an officially arranged cover-up...
...It is instructive to compare the treatment accorded the revolutionary groups with that received by the Zapatistas...
...Thousands of troops were dispatched to hunt down the rebels...
...Should the Zapatistas return to armed insurrection, it is almost axiomatic that the more militant guerrillas will follow suit...
...Actually, the modern wave of confrontations between the Mexican government and its native antagonists began in 1968 at Tlatelolco, where the Army brutally suppressed a demonstration by college students...
...Their specialty was kidnapping, and among their victims was Jalisco's former Governor José Guadalupe Zuno, father-in-law of President Luis Echeverria...
...Jesus Dominguez Morales, a native of the village of Guevea de Humboldt, pointed out that "a pistol costs more than 1,000 pesos (about $ 100) and the Army offers me a basket which is worth much less...
...The other three are EPR offshoots: the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI...
...Avoiding overt criticism of the EPR, schismatic leaders have made vague references to differences in policy, strategy and methodology...
...The rebels immediately denied this, pointing out that the mortars were fired between 3:00 and 3:15 a.m...
...Left-wing Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia, a strong supporterof Subcomandante Marcos and his Zapatista movement in Chiapas, joined eight other bishops in signing a letter deploring EPR's use of force...
...Urging that Fox take action against those responsible for the "genocide," Cabanas has charged that in the Guerrero village of Atoyac, the family seat, 450 people "disappeared" or were killed by the Army and White Brigades...
...To date there has been none of the bickering that characterized rival MarxistLeninist groups when Stalin and Trotsky were vying for power...
...But they have denounced the law that ultimately was adopted as an emasculated version of what they agreed to in negotiations with the Chiapas Peace Commission...
...Do you want to fall into the government's trap of pitting one side against the other...
...Don't be afraid, we're friends," they told the local inhabitants as they went to homes and places of business asking everyone to attend a meeting in the main plaza...
...Having been tipped off about it, reporters from Mexico City were at the meeting...
...On the urban front, FARP staged a nocturnal attack in February 2000 on the Puebla headquarters of the hated National Research and Security Center...
...The Oaxaca State Congress, having already passed an amnesty law, has now adopted a "food-for-arms" program in keeping with its policy of extending honey rather than vinegar to the rebels...
...According to government sources they were captured at Chilpancingo, Guerrero State, in an ERPI safe house filled with weapons...
...Primary among them is the Popular Revolutionary Army...
...It's not the same thing...
...But what sent shock waves throughout the Mexican establishment was that one of the attacks took place in Puerto Marqués, a tiny coastal village about three miles from downtown Acapulco...
...and FARP in February 2000...
...Neoliberal," with its connotation of global capitalism, is probably the dirtiest word in the guerrilla lexicon...
...Youfightto seize power...
...Cabanas, a rural Guerrero schoolteacher-turned guerrilla leader, leda dreaded band in the Sierra Madre del Sur untilhe was killed in 1974...
...At 2:30 p.m...
...He was freed from prison in 1999 after being exonerated in the killing of two security guards employed by a Mexico City daily...
...Their main complaint is that in its present form the law restricts the access of indigenous populations to natural resources and gives local governments too much power over Indian communities...
...the Popular Villista Revolutionary Army (EVRP...
...and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People (FARP...
...Addison De Witt is the pseudonym of a freelance journalist who lives in Mexico...
...But from May 1974, when Lucio Cabanas kidnapped Governor Ruben Figueroa of Guerrero, the government waged a persistent, low-intensity war against armed guerrillas...
...The document claimed that 92 rebel bands are operating in 22 Mexican states...
...They further charged that the children were hurt in a daylight explosion orchestrated by the PFP as part of a plan to make the EVRP appear reckless and indifferent to human life...
...Perhaps one reason the current revolutionary leaders talk more about strategy than ideology is that PROCUP's original platform was never repudiated...
...The program has proven an abject failure...
...We fight for democracy, liberty and justice...
...At present the non-Zapatista rebels are concentrating more on agitprop than on armed insurrection...
...Meanwhile, an EZLN communiqué has urged the Chiapas rebels not to lay down their arms, adding that "they [the lawmakers] justify the existenceof armed groups in Mexico...
...According to recent polls, a growing number of Mexican citizens are becoming disenchanted with President Vicente Fox...
...proclaims that a dictatorship of the proletariat should be installed in Mexico...
...The violence-prone EPR was denounced at all points on the political spectrum...
...On August 29, a well-armed guerrilla group that calls itself the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) struck at military and public security targets in five of the country's 32 states...
...Judging from their denunciations of the government's forcible takeover of the National University, it is not unreasonable to assume many of them are students or teachers at Mexican universities...
...Their detention, though, has not curbed ERPI's essentially rural actions—mostly in the hills of Guerrero and in the Sierra Madre del Sur...
...only 70 weapons have been collected in the state's 570 municipalities...
...In the popular resort town of Puerto Vallarta the airport...
...Where the EZLN had mainly poor, antiquated weapons, the EPR boasted a wealth of up-to-date AK47 and AR-15 assault rifles...
...Even Zedillo, hardly a Zapatista sympathizer, made the comparison...
...The Zapatistas had demanded this legislation as one of three conditions for reopening stalled peace talks with the government...
...There are differing versions of what happened...
Vol. 84 • May 2001 • No. 3
