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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2005 
Mexican Rebels Promise End to Attacks
 Reuters
| | The rebels and thousands of their supporters have melted into the hills. |
Mexico's Zapatista rebels, who surprised the country this week by putting their forces on "red alert," announced they were not planning a return to violence.
The Zapatistas pulled out of villages they controlled in the southern state of Chiapas and shut down their radio station in order to consider "a new step in the struggle."
The rebels did not say what that new direction would be, but their leader, Subcomandante Marcos, issued a statement on Thursday saying new attacks were not planned.
"We are not, for our part, planning or consulting about a return to offensive military combat," Marcos said.
The Zapatistas emerged from the jungle in 1994 to stage attacks and take over towns but there has been no fighting for years.
The rebels and perhaps thousands of their supporters have melted into the hills in recent days, abandoning dozens of villages to consult among themselves on the Zapatistas' future.
"We are now consulting our hearts to see if we are going to say and do something else," said Marcos, whose ski mask disguise propelled him to world fame in the 1990s.
"We will soon have results and will let them be known," he said but gave no details of what the rebels might decide.
There has been speculation that the guerrillas may want to define a political role for themselves before presidential elections next year.
Marcos said the rebels were not seeking "a post, an amount of money, a promise, a candidacy".
The enigmatic leader's statement had the air of a farewell letter. He thanked all those who had supported the rebels over the years and fondly recalled events like a march across the country to Mexico City in 2001 to ask lawmakers to pass an Indian rights bill. A watered down version of the bill was approved, upsetting the Zapatistas.
Villages empty
Academics close to the Zapatistas suggested they were regrouping to decide how to face growing threats from paramilitary groups who oppose them.
Pro-Zapatista villages stood almost empty after the rebels and supporters left for unknown locations. On Wednesday, a handful of soldiers took up position at a makeshift rebel guard post on the road near the village of Oventic.
Locals welcomed the promise not to take up arms again unless attacked.
"If that is what they are saying, that is great," said Juan Javier Mendez, resident of the town of San Cristobal de las Casas.
The town was taken over by the Zapatistas at the start of their rebellion but now caters to busloads of foreign tourists, many of them European. Street vendors do a roaring trade in Marcos memorabilia like ski masks, pens and rag dolls.
The government admitted on Thursday that a controversial report saying that the military had found marijuana plantations in Zapatista territory was not true.
The Defense Ministry had said on Monday that almost 200 soldiers destroyed 44 marijuana plantations in Chiapas in three drug raids in rebel areas last week.
But government spokesman Ruben Aguilar acknowledged the raids were not in areas controlled by the Zapatistas.
"The three municipalities where they found those 44 plantations are not in the Zapatistas' zone of influence but near them," he told journalists. |
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