Report Says Mexico Not To Blame For Chiapas Massacre

by Diego Cevallos

In the meantime, violence, fear and impunity persist in the area of the crime.

According to the government, the massacre arose from tension between local communities, but the Church, humanitarian groups and opposition parties feel it was a state-sanctioned crime committed as part of the low-intensity war waged by the government on the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN).

In a lengthy report released December 20, the attorney general's office said the state had no responsibility whatsoever in the killing of 21 women, 15 children and nine men on Dec. 22, 1997 by a group of armed men in the village of Acteal.

The attorney general's office acknowledged that police agents and irregular armed groups were involved, but denied that that demonstrated participation by any government body, as human rights and church groups maintained. If the military had been in the area, the massacre would have been avoided, said Attorney General Jorge Madrazo.

Madrazo and his team said political conflicts and family feuds between Native groups, stirred up by the presence of EZLN sympathizers, gave rise to the attack.

The massacre is the most violent crime committed in Chiapas since the EZLN made its first public appearance in early 1994 and engaged in two weeks of fighting with the army that left a death toll of 193, according to official figures.

The investigation by the attorney general's office consisted of dozens of reports by specialists, the arrest of more than 96 people -- mainly Native -- and a spate of interrogations and interviews.

Reports from Acteal indicate that a year after the massacre, the local Native residents remain steeped in poverty and isolation, while the military presence has failed to ease the tension between opposing communities.

Opponents of the government living in Acteal say they have been pressured and threatened to leave town.

Local rights groups and members of the Catholic Church in Chiapas, who have conducted their own inquiries into the killing, said Dec. 21 that they were disappointed by the official version of the incident.

The attorney general's office has shown "an evident incapacity to verify the truth, and its conclusions are evasive and poor," said Gonzalo Ituarte, vicar of the diochese of San Cristobal, the second largest city in Chiapas.

Everything indicates that there were police nearby when the massacre took place, the military was not far off and the real criminals are being protected, said the vicar, the right-hand man of Bishop Samuel Ruiz, who the government charges has links to the EZLN.

The massacre, which put Chiapas in the international limelight and the government of Ernesto Zedillo under pressure for an explanation, is being commemorated this week with a range of religious and artistic ceremonies.

A report on the massacre drawn up by the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center and released on Dec. 10 states that "the Mexican government is morally and politically responsible for the Acteal massacre, because it was incapable of protecting the victims."

According to the center, the government insists on treating the massacre in a fragmented manner and maintaining the racist posture that "Indians kill themselves for any insignificant reason."

In Chiapas, the government protects paramilitary groups and permits "extremely grave situations with respect to human rights," added the Chiapas-based Center.

Meanwhile, peace talks between the government and the EZLN remain suspended since 1996, the army's presence in Chiapas is still massive, and political, religious and racial violence continues in the province.