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 Editorials | Issues | September 2007 
A Grocer's Secret Life as a Rebel
 Hector Tobar - Los Angeles Times
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 |  | Our political Constitution is ... a dead letter, individual rights are violated every day, and the people are left out of the economic and political decisions of the country.
- EPR communiqué |  | |
Edmundo Reyes is a slight, unassuming man of 55 who loves baseball and children's literature. Until recently, he sold candy and soft drinks from his family's corner grocery store in this city's Nezahualcoyotl district.
In May, he left to visit relatives in Oaxaca and never returned. His disappearance might have gone unnoticed but for the fact that it has set off a small war that has twice shut down a sizable chunk of the Mexican economy.
Apparently unbeknownst to his family and friends, Reyes was leading a double life: as a leader of a group calling itself "the Popular Revolutionary Army," also known by its Spanish initials: EPR. His comrades are convinced he has been captured by the "enemy."
To force his return and that of another EPR militant said to have disappeared with him, EPR has started bombing pipelines owned by Pemex, the national oil company.
The attacks are the most spectacular campaign by a guerrilla army in Mexico since the 1994 uprising of the Zapatistas in the southern state of Chiapas.
Unlike the Zapatistas, EPR has struck at a critical element of Mexico's economic infrastructure: the pipelines that transport petroleum products from the Gulf of Mexico.
Attacks on 10 pipelines in July and this month forced the temporary closing of some of Mexico's largest factories, caused fuel shortages and pushed up the price of oil futures in New York. The economic losses caused by the bombings total hundreds of millions of dollars, according to business groups here.
Yet EPR is an "army" consisting of possibly fewer than 100 people, including several members of five extended families with roots in Oaxaca, according to analysts and Mexican officials.
Intelligence reports leaked to the Mexican media say the mild-mannered Reyes was an EPR leader.
"I'm not convinced that all the things they say about him are true," said Nadin Reyes Maldonado, his daughter and a 25-year-old nursery-school teacher. "But when he appears again, there are some things he's going to have to explain to us."
The EPR launched itself publicly in 1996 in Guerrero, a Pacific Coast state with long traditions of armed resistance to the Mexican government. Masked members armed with assault rifles marched into the town of Aguas Blancas as local residents were gathering to commemorate the killings a year earlier of 17 members of a peasants' rights group by state police.
At the time, Mexico was already well into its transition from one-party state to a multi-party democracy. But to the EPR, Mexico remained a country of political impunity ruled on behalf of a wealthy few.
"Our political Constitution is ... a dead letter," read the first EPR communiqué, explaining the group's decision to take up arms. "Individual rights are violated every day, and the people are left out of the economic and political decisions of the country."
Since then, the group has split several times. It now appears to be rooted farther south, in Oaxaca, a state where social inequities and a heavy-handed governing style have fed several militant movements.
Oaxaca remains one of the poorest states in Mexico: 68 per cent of its residents live below the Mexican government's poverty line, with monthly income less than $90. And more than one-third of the population is living in "extreme poverty," according to government statistics.
The EPR has bombed banks and other targets since 2001. Mexican authorities have identified most of the EPR leadership but have been unable to apprehend them, said Jose Luis Pineyro, a security expert at Metropolitan Autonomous University here.
"There was a failure of civilian and military intelligence here," Pineyro said. "The EPR increased their technical and military capacity. They expanded their support base. None of this was detected."
Authorities said the devices used against the Pemex pipelines were made from a combination of plastic explosives and potassium nitrate, also known as saltpetre.
More impressive than the bombs themselves was the logistical sophistication of the operation: six targets struck simultaneously with 12 bombs.
"To do something like this, you have to have a minimal support base," said Jorge Chabat, an analyst at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching. "You need people who will protect you, hide you, a place where you can melt away."
Friends and relatives say Reyes, the grocer from Nezahualcoyotl, was a member of an impoverished Oaxaca family. Too poor to complete his studies, he was self-educated and migrated to Mexico City in search of work.
"He travelled often to Oaxaca to visit his mother," said Adrian Ramirez, president of the Mexican League for the Defence of Human Rights. "No one suspected that he could be linked to an insurgent group."
Intelligence reports say members of five extended families make up much of the rank and file of the EPR faction responsible for the Pemex bombings.
Many of the leaders are men in their 50s with experience in failed guerrilla groups of the 1970s. |
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