AUT: E;MR,G.H.Turbiville,Mexico's Other Insurgents,May-June 1997 (fwd)

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 04:10:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: NUEVO AMANECER PRESS <amanecer@xxxxxx>
Reply-To: mexico2000@xxxxxxxxx
To: Multiple Recipients of List Mexico2000 <mexico2000@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Military Review: Mexico's Other Insurgents


NUEVO AMANECER PRESS - EUROPA
Darrin Wood, Director.
dwood@xxxxxxxxxx

*****************************

Dado que normalmente enviamos informacion acerca de la contrainsurgencia en
Mexico y su relacion con las estrategias disenados en los EE.UU., queremos
ahora ofrecer algo desde el otro punto de vista. En otras palabras un
analysis de las insurgencias en Mexico escrito por un intelectual que
trabaja para el Ejercito Estadounidense en el "Foreign Military Studies
Office" en Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Disfrutalo...

NAP-Europa

P.D. Lo siento por el "English Only" del articulo...

*****************************************************

(Military Review. US Army Command and General Staff College. Volume LXXVII
- May-June 1997.)

Mexico's Other Insurgents
by Dr. Graham H. Turbiville, JR.,

A central post-Cold War security issue is the fate of insurgent movements
that received weapons, equipment and political support for decades from the
Soviet bloc and other communist states around the world. In Latin America,
where the development and consolidation of democratic regimes often is
accompanied by promises of free-market economic and open-trade policies,
the virtual shutoff of outside support to insurgents seemed to assure their
eventual dissolution. In the 1990s, Central American peace accords and
electoral successes and South American counterinsurgency gains, as in Peru,
reinforced this view.1

Optimistic assessments based on these events may yet prove to be accurate.
But as the century winds down, troubling developments in the Southern
Hemisphere suggest that "guerrilla" problems may plague some Latin American
governments as they pursue national progress, prosperity and stability.
Specialists within and outside the region point to political, legislative
and judicial institutions
whose reform has been incomplete and whose inefficiencies and corruption
have fostered growing popular resentment. In addition, for some Latin
American states, faltering free-market economies, shaky financial policies
and the failure to deliver on social programs have resulted in greater
inequities
in the distribution of wealth and opportunity. Although the poorest sectors
of society bear the greatest burden, the middle classes are increasingly
affected and resentful.2

Crime and violence have increased in some Latin American states as a result
of difficult economic circumstances, high unemployment and weakened
institutions following years of conflicts. Demobilizing military-and
insurgent-establishments has increased the number of unemployed, who
sometimes turn to crime and banditry. In some areas, drug trafficking
remains a seductive income
source, as well as a major contributor to criminal and random violence. The
police's inability to deal with acute crime has forced some states-Brazil,
El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico-to temporarily use their militaries to
deal with criminals. This has raised concerns-well founded or not-about
militarization and the emergence of "populist military leaders" who may
seize power to ensure
order and stability.3

In this late 20th-century environment, where democratic leaders are trying
to solve difficult political, economic, social and security issues, some
old guerrilla movements are showing signs of life. "Revolutionary" programs
include toppling existing regimes, seizing power, redressing enduring
national problems and even entering the political process. While at least
echoes of old Soviet,
Cuban, and Maoist versions of Marxism-Leninism and anti-imperialist
rhetoric and ideology remain, issues of national or local power and
personal or organizational profit are becoming movement motivators.
Although communist state support has generally ended, mobilized foreign
leftist interest and lobbying have not. Traditional rallies, newsletters,
visiting delegations, "peace brigades" and even the Internet-whose real
impact is yet to be determined-are ways revolutionaries influence
populations and supporters.4

More specifically, Latin America's recent "old guerrilla" activity includes
resignation and indifference as well as efforts to win integrated
government roles.5 It has also included actions ranging from well-planned
surprise strikes against specific targets to preparation for major new
campaigns and offensives. For example, in Chile, a faction of the Manuel
Rodriguez Patriotic Front (FPMR)
executed the stunning December 1996 helicopter escape of four FPMR leaders
from a maximum security prison near Santiago. The FPMR action immediately
brought the group into the public spotlight again, raised the specter of
other impending strikes and introduced a sensitive new issue into Chilean
internal politics regarding the current "threat of radical groups."6

Despite being badly damaged by Peruvian security forces throughout the
1990s, both the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) and the larger
Maoist Sendero Luminoso (SL), or Shining Path, have sustained themselves
with funding from drug trafficking, kidnapping and robbery, as well as with
international support. The MRTA's successful December 1996 seizure of
important Peruvian and international hostages, followed by four months of
posturing and negotiations before Peruvian security forces successfully
ended the crisis, momentarily re-established the group as a serious threat
to Peru .7 The SL's reorganization attempts have been accompanied by
periodic attacks in Peru's urban and rural areas and a frequently stated
promise that the "people's war will continue."8 Both groups have Internet
sites.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the smaller National
Liberation Army pose the greatest armed threat to a Latin American state.
With longstanding ties to narcotrafficking and skilled in extortion,
robbery and kidnapping, these groups have vowed that 1997 will see an
intensification
of the "internal war."9 Overall, events of the past six months suggest that
even small, badly damaged Latin American groups possess:

     A capacity to use stunning strikes and successes to surprise the
governments they oppose.
     An ability and willingness to sustain themselves with drug
trafficking, kidnapping, robbery, extortion and foreign donations.
     An ability to attract sympathizers and activists internationally.
     A continued willingness to cooperate in joint ventures.
     Skill in exploiting enduring political, economic and social problems.

Mexico presents special concerns. It is vital to Mexican and US security
that existing and incipient insurgent movements be examined, understood and
resolved. This is an undertaking as complex and challenging as any in Latin
America, which forms a backdrop to what may be happening in Mexico. This
article addresses the spectrum of Mexican insurgent groups over the years
and highlights some complexities that make Mexican guerrillas an important
topic for research and assessment.

Old Guerrillas, Zapatistas and the Lucio Cabanas Legacy

Demographic projections from the 1995 Mexican census indicated that
Mexico's population would grow to about 93 million by the beginning of
1997.10

Like the rest of the industrialized and industrializing world, Mexico's
population had become more heavily urbanized than just five years before.
With urban populations concentrated primarily in northern Mexico's large
cities, the largely rural south presents a striking contrast in
development, wealth and opportunity. Land distribution and agricultural
reform are particularly contentious issues. Recent severe national economic
setbacks have exacerbated poverty in the south. As Mexican commentators in
and out of government have noted, rebellion in Chiapas, a series of highly
publicized assassinations, institutional corruption, drug traffickers'
growing power and rising crime
rates have led to popular dissatisfaction with the ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its free-market/open-trade economic program
(dubbed "neo-liberalism" throughout Latin America). These problems-far from
unique in the hemisphere or elsewhere in the world-have preoccupied
President Ernesto Zedillo and the Mexican leadership for the last three and
a half years and have been joined by the proliferation of guerrilla groups
in the south and elsewhere. While Mexico has been spared the tragedy of
major regime-threatening insurgencies, the country does have a history of
communist and other radical group insurgency and terrorism.

More than 20 years before "Subcomandante Marcos," Zapatista
National Liberation Army (EZLN) spokesman and leader, became world
famous, Mexico's most celebrated guerrilla leader was a former rural
schoolteacher named Lucio Cabanas Barrientos. Leading the military arm
of his Party of the Poor (Pdlp), Cabanas operated successfully for years
in the rugged mountains of Mexico's Guerrero state. For many Mexicans,
the Pdlp's Peasant Brigade of Justice ambushes of military and police
units, kidnappings, bank robberies and other armed actions were an
unwelcome specter of communist revolution that by the late 1960s and
early 1970s seemed to be gaining ground in Mexico as it had in other
parts of Latin America. To others, however, Cabanas was a strong
champion against an oppressive local regime and an indifferent central
government whose policies had perpetuated the poverty, lack of opportunity
and brutality that characterized day-to-day life in much of rural Mexico.
Cabanas had a multipoint program that called for defeating the government
of the rich and installing a new regime; expropriating factories and
facilities for the workers' benefit; enacting broad financial, judicial,
educational and social welfare reforms that focused on workers, peasants,
Indians and women; and removing Mexico from the colonialism of the United
States and other foreign countries.11

When Cabanas and several key followers were finally hunted down and killed
in Guerrero by the Mexican army in late 1974, it was cause for both
official Mexican celebration as well as deep disappointment among some in
Mexico's southern Sierra Madre who saw Cabanas as a romantic revolutionary
leader fighting for justice in rural Mexico. North of the border, however,
Cabanas and
his comrades' deaths earned only a short notice on the New York Times' back
pages and limited commentary thereafter.12 The United States, focused on a
host of Cold War security issues, had only passing interest in the death of
an obscure Mexican insurgent whose group posed no serious military threat
to the Mexican government.

	Numerous rural and urban groups-mostly small and transitory-emerged during
the 1960s and 1970s. Their most notable leaders, such as Cabanas or
Guerrero's Revolutionary National Civic Association leader Genaro Vazquez
Rojas, developed loyal local followings that generated popular ballads and
enduring legends celebrating their careers.13 The popular, romantic,
revolutionary images of Cabanas and Vazquez seemed to be inspired more by
Mexican inequalities than some larger communist vision and represented only
one dimension of the 1960s, and 1970s insurgent and terrorist groups.

Clearly, many groups were encouraged, materially supported and sometimes
trained by communist regimes abroad. Inspired by late 1950s' student
activism and fueled by real inequities in wealth, opportunity and justice,
small Mexican groups became increasingly militant and inclined to armed
action in the 1960s. Radical groups became associated with Soviet, North
Korean, Cuban and Maoist ideologies. They debated the relative merits of
these various ideologies, however far removed they may have been from
Mexican realities. Not infrequently, they angrily split into factions over
differences regarding, for example, the value of Cuban foco guerrilla
strategy versus a Maoist-style "prolonged people's war" approach to
establishing socialism in Mexico.

The Revolutionary Action Movement (MAR) is a notable example of a group
supported by foreign communists. The MAR was fully established in 1969 and
became active principally in Mexico's Federal District and the state of
Veracruz, although MAR elements existed in some other states as well. MAR
originated in the late 1960s in Moscow, where Mexican students attending
Patrice Lamumba University-thanks to scholarships from the Mexican-Russian
Cultural Exchange Institute in Mexico City and Monterrey-formed a "studies
circle" that developed a concept for what became the insurgent group. The
group received support from Soviet ally North Korea, and in 1968, the first
small Mexican cadre was dispatched to a training center near Pyongyang for
ideological and extensive guerrilla training. At least two other MAR
contingents followed in 1969 and 1970. North Korean military personnel
provided the instruction. The group sought to create instability in Mexico
and establish the conditions for a Marxist-Leninist regime there. They
recruited and trained new members in Mexico, supported themselves with bank
robberies and kidnappings and conducted numerous armed assaults and acts of
sabotage against regime targets. MAR structure included an urban guerrilla
wing designated 2 de Octubre del MAR and a rural wing, Ejercito Popular del
MAR. The group was nearly destroyed by Mexican security forces in the 1970s
and apparently disappeared by the early 1980s.14

By the end of the 1970s, earlier insurgent dangers in Mexico were fading
from public view. The army and police had largely destroyed or dispersed
small rural and urban groups, and the country turned its attention to
modernization and development. Nevertheless, the memory of Cabanas and
other 1960s' and 1970s' armed resistance figures continued to influence
rural peasants and Indians in
the southern mountains and disaffected citizens elsewhere in Mexico.

A few groups reorganized and endured. The Revolutionary Clandestine
Workers' Union Party of the People (PROCUP) formed in 1971 to succeed the
People's Union (UP). PROCUP declared a "prolonged people's war" to liberate
Mexico "from the bourgeoisie and North American imperialism."15 The group,
primarily active in Oaxaca and Guerrero, eventually achieved "ideological
unification" with the remnants of Cabanas' Pdlp, forming PROCUP-Pdlp by
1980.16 Following a
doctrine that combined traditional Marxist-Leninist and Maoist concepts,
PROCUP-Pdlp continued minor, sporadic activity in the 1980s, including
assassinations, robberies and kidnappings. Although emerging infrequently
in public view in the 1980s, the group maintained its identity and its goal to
establish a proletarian dictatorship and socialism in Mexico. It also
expanded its cells to include at least rudimentary cadres in other states,
reportedly including Jalisco, Puebla, Michoacan, Hidalgo, Morelos and
Veracruz, as well as the Federal District.17 Emphasizing the old linkages,
David Cabanas Barrientos, Lucio's brother, became a principal PROCUP-Pdlp
leader and was jailed in
1990 for his alleged role in an assassination.


Cadres of what became the EZLN began to secretly organize in the early
1980s. The EZLN claims it was founded in 1982. Formed in part by members of
old splintered groups and drawing on a predominantly indigenous following,
EZLN's evolution was complex and is still debated.18 During its formative
years, the
group gave little indication of its existence, a posture that fit well with
most Mexicans' perception that guerrillas were an issue of the past.

However, the guerrillas were not gone from every area of Mexico. In the
early 1990s, leftist posters still littered the back streets of Guerrero
municipalities, invoking Cabanas' memory. Reports of secretive armed groups
training in the mountains were as commonplace locally as they were heatedly
denied by Mexican authorities.19 PROCUP-Pdlp conducted a series of bombings
and attacks in Guerrero, Oaxaca and the Federal District in 1990 in an
unsuccessful bid to win the release of jailed members. These acts were
characterized as the crimes of a few die-hard radicals. Occasional violent
encounters between armed groups and Mexican army or police elements were
publicly attributed to
attacks by narcotraffickers or bandits-a plausible explanation that was
probably partially correct.

On 1 January 1994, 15 years of official government and public complacency
ended abruptly when the EZLN publicly announced its existence with the
brief occupation of several towns in Chiapas, resulting in sharp clashes
with the army that left nearly 150 dead. Stunned by the event and its
implications for the rest of Mexico-and initially uncertain about the
EZLN's origins and presence in other areas of the country-Mexican
authorities and the media focused more closely on traditional areas of
insurgency as potential outbreak sites.20 Guerrero quickly moved to the
forefront as an area that appeared ripe for revitalized insurgent activity.
Hints from Subcomandante Marcos concerning EZLN links to other Mexican
armed groups and Guerrero's proximity to the troubled states of Oaxaca,
Puebla, Michoacan and Morelos led authorities to believe that some areas in
Guerrero were likely leftist guerrilla strongholds which had the potential
to destabilize other areas.

Guerrero state-about the size of West Virginia-has a population of more
than 2.6 million dispersed throughout some 75 municipalities.21 The
population includes a substantial Indian component. The Sierra Madre del
Sur mountain range parallels Guerrero's Pacific coast and was a traditional
guerrilla
operating area for Cabanas and Vazquez. The mountains help define the rural
region's character and contribute to its natural beauty, isolation and
enduring poverty. While the capital of Chilpancingo is an important
administrative and cultural center, the famed resort of Acapulco, together
with a few tourist areas such as Taxco and Iguala, are far better known to
North Americans and other foreigners. Guerrero presents as striking a
contrast between wealth and poverty as any Mexican region.

As the Zapatista uprising settled into a stalemate including on-and-off
peace talks; simmering, low-level, periodic violence; and remarkable
international media success for the EZLN, guerrilla variants began emerging
in Guerrero and surrounding states. For example, the Clandestine Armed
Forces (FAC) announced its existence in 1995. The FAC was reportedly active
in Guerrero's Costa
Grande, particularly among radical groups in the Coyuca de Benitez
community.22 The Liberation Army of the Southern Sierra (ELSS) also
surfaced in 1995. Reportedly comprising a diverse collection of armed
groups operating in Guerrero's coastal mountains, the ELSS claimed to have
once planned a massive uprising but reorganized into cells to support the
group's activities for a
sustained time period. Numerous other groups announced themselves or were
reported in Guerrero and elsewhere from January 1994 to June 1996.
Information about their composition and activities varies greatly and in
some cases is limited only to the group's name and the circumstances under
which it was identified.

Of particular note is reported guerrilla activity in Oaxaca state, which
has both a tradition of insurgency and shares Guerrero's poverty. By spring
1996, antigovernment and other armed groups were reported in several areas
of Oaxaca. While guerrilla activity in the state was sporadic for more than
30 years, rumors concerning Oaxacan armed groups intensified following the
EZLN's
appearance. Two groups illustrate the Oaxacan "insurgent" problem and its
heavily indigenous composition. The Clandestine Indigenous National
Liberation Army claims to operate in Oaxaca's mountains and urban areas and
to include Indians from 16 ethnic groups. A second group, the Movement for
Trique Unification and Struggle, purports to represent disaffected,
poverty-stricken
Trique Indians who live in the mountains.

These and other disaffected organizations decry the extreme poverty and
diminishing prospects in a state with the greatest number of family
dependents per worker in the country. Large numbers of Oaxacan teenagers
are now reaching working age and do not have any job prospects, making them
potential recruits for guerrilla or criminal groups. In both Oaxaca and
Guerrero, the extent of actual guerrilla activity is clouded by the
simultaneous activities of strong narcotrafficking and bandit gangs as well
as so-called White Guard armed groups employed by local landowners and
political bosses.24 While the proliferation of groups in the Sierra Madre
del Sur and elsewhere raised the threat of broader guerrilla activity in
Mexico, the appearance of a new armed group made the threat real.

The Popular Liberation Army and Other Groups

On 28 June 1995, 17 campesino activists with the Southern Sierra Campesino
Organization were murdered by Guerrero State Judicial Police at the Aguas
Blancas (White Waters) community near Coyuca de Benitez. The automatic
weapons attack was captured on videotape and generated a firestorm of
protest and violence that eventually led to the Guerrero state governor's
dismissal and
the arrest of several state police officers. The action galvanized
campesino organizations, including the armed groups whose announced
existence had been followed with little action. The attack revived the
memory of a state police attack 28 years earlier against protesting
teachers led by Lucio Cabanas at the town of Atoyac, 40 km northwest of
Coyuca. That incident sent Cabanas into the
mountains with his guerrillas.



	One year after the 1995 massacre, dozens of masked, armed men in uniforms
attended a 28 June 1996 commemoration of the murders to announce to several
thousand assembled people that Mexico's newest guerrilla movement had
arrived.25 In a communique read at the scene by the masked "Captain
Emiliano"-and thereafter designated the Aguas Blancas Manifesto-the group
identified itself as the Popular Liberation Army (EPR) and stated its goals:

     Remove the "illegitimate" Mexican government and the foreign forces
sustaining it.
     Restore popular sovereignty.
     Implement economic, political and social change.
     Establish fair international relations.
     Punish those guilty of crimes against the people.

The EPR asserted that conditions facing Sierra Madre del Sur peasants were
"similar to those which in 1967 and 1968 caused Comandantes Lucio Cabanas
and Genaro Vazquez to take up arms against exploitation and oppression."
After laying a wreath made from plants that "witnessed the cowardly murder"
in 1995 and firing their AK-47 and AR-15 rifles into the air 17 times in
memory of the murdered campesinos, the EPR disappeared.26 Within hours,
however, EPR elements
distributing Manifesto copies engaged Mexican police in a fire fight near
the Guerrero capital of Chilpancingo, wounding several policemen and a
civilian. This was the beginning of a series of attacks and armed actions
that established the EPR as the most serious armed threat to Mexico's
stability.27

Mexican civilian authorities quickly characterized the EPR as bandits and
criminals and-in the interior minister's words-a "pantomime." Meanwhile,
army units were rushing to Guerrero in truck convoys, Panhard Lynx armored
vehicles, high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles and helicopters. A 2
July 1996 EPR communique warned of "imminent" armed clashes with the army
and police.28 The
army, whose internal intelligence assessments were always more informed and
accurate than government press releases indicated, had already concluded
that the EPR was a genuine guerrilla force-better equipped and organized
than the EZLN-and should be dealt with immediately.29


	This view was underscored by a 17 July 1996 attack on an army patrol in
southwestern Guerrero, where several soldiers were reportedly wounded and a
civilian was killed, and by an ambush of a navy patrol two weeks later that
resulted in a wounded officer. The EPR confirmed it was a genuine force in
a 7 August interview with selected journalists at a hidden spot in the
Sierra Madre del Este, a mountain range that runs north through Oaxaca, San
Luis Potosi, Veracruz, Hidalgo and Tamaulipas. The interview was held
hundreds of kilometers from the site of the EPR's first appearance. At this
EPR "tactical camp," representatives of the group's "general command"
disclosed the organization was
established 1 May 1994. By 18 May, the EPR had joined with other resistance
groups to form "a single political-military structure," designated the
Revolutionary Popular Democratic Party (PDPR).30 The PDPR, governed by a
"central committee," coordinated the activities of 14 guerrilla and
opposition groups.31 A few of the these groups had announced their
existence earlier, while others went public for the first time. The most
notorious of the 14 was clearly PROCUP-Pdlp, which linked Mexico's
guerrilla past with the present. The Mexican government asserted that the
PROCUP-Pdlp was the EPR's armed wing and heart.32 The complexity of
Mexico's guerrilla past, however, makes any such facile judgment
questionable. Continued evaluation of the EPR/PDPR's origins, constituent
members and affiliations is necessary.

On the day of the interview, EPR snipers killed an army cook and wounded
several others in a Guerrero attack. Three days later, an army patrol was
ambushed in Guerrero, and two soldiers were wounded. The EPR's Comandante
Jose Arturo acknowledged that the group robbed banks and conducted
kidnappings to raise funds and stressed that many other armed groups were
active in Mexico. Implying that many EPR attacks were unreported,
commanders claimed that from 28 June to 25 August 1996, some 59 Mexican
army soldiers were killed in Guerrero engagements alone.33

Whatever the accuracy of that figure, EPR armed actions on 28 and 29 August
exceeded all government and popular conceptions of the group's
organization, strength and capability. A coordinated multistate attack
against army, police and other government targets in Oaxaca, Guerrero,
Puebla and the Federal District left as many as 18 people dead and more
than two dozen wounded, according to media reports. The EPR claimed 41
officials were killed and 48 were wounded.34 Guerrillas operated in groups
of up to 130. EPR guerrillas blocked roads and distributed pamphlets in
Chiapas and seized a radio station in Tabasco.35 Shootings and propaganda
activity were reported in Guanajuato state, evidently without casualties.

This series of assaults marked the beginning of periodic EPR armed actions
that have continued into 1997. According to knowledgeable Mexicans and the
EPR itself, these attacks have been greatly underreported. Ambushes and
raids have inflicted military and police casualties in prime EPR operating
areas and elsewhere. For example, the day after the August strikes, 40
armed men in
civilian dress-presumed to be EPR-attacked an army convoy in Michoacan
state and killed one soldier and wounded several others. The EPR's presence
may extend into as many as 11 states.36 Interviews, communiques, two
election cease-fires and proselytizing activities have kept the EPR in the
public eye, even as the Mexican army and police arrest suspects and
establish a large, visible presence in all affected areas. The EPR's
December seizure of two Oaxaca radio stations-and its announcement that it
was prepared to carry out "liberty suicides" to topple the government added
a strange and surprising dimension.37

After several months of relative quiet early in 1997, EPR clashes with the
army in late May left at least five government troops dead and others
wounded. These two firefights- both in Guerrero State- also left four
guerrillas killed. At the same time, other armed groups-which may or may
not be associated with the EPR-have continued to appear, including the
Guanajuato Revolutionary Army,
which surfaced in August 1996; the Revolutionary Army for Popular
Insurrection, which issued a November 1996 "Declaration of the North"
calling for political and economic reform, expressing support for the EZLN
and EPR and generating a security alert as far north as Tijuana on the US
border; and the Armed Front for the Liberation of Marginalized People of
Guerrero (FALPMG), which issued a two-page communique in Atoyac in early
December calling for truly free elections, better living conditions and an
end to the persecution of other opposition forces.38 The FALPMG followed up
its initial declaration with a January 1997 communique largely reiterating
its earlier demands and reminding readers that Guerrero peasants rebelled
in the 1840s to reclaim appropriated land.39 No armed actions by these
groups-if indeed they constitute real
organizations-have been documented.

As the new year began, yet another guerrilla group-this one with more
visible teeth-made its presence known with the murder of four people 90
miles east of Acapulco in the Guerrero district of Copanatoyac. Uniformed
men with AK-47s sought out and executed the individuals for unspecified
crimes. The group members left behind a statement identifying themselves as
Justice Army of
Defenseless People representatives and decrying the lack of justice for
oppressed people.40 Such actions may be the violent resolution of a local
dispute, a government provocation, an armed encounter between
drug-trafficking rivals or an assault by a private paramilitary group. On
the other hand, Mexican commentators, such as Indian affairs specialist
Carlos Montemayor, note that for 200 years, "the epithet `guerrilla' has
always been used synonymously with bandit, gunman, traitor to the
fatherland or common criminal," characterizations that obscure the violence
and social problems that sometimes lead to outright armed opposition.41

While the true nature, strength, affiliation and even actual existence of
such self-declared groups are unclear, their proliferation is an escalating
problem. Mexican security concerns surrounding the guerrilla groups also
include the large influx of arms into the country, many of which come from
the United States.42 Mexico continues to investigate reports that foreign
subversives-such as the Basque Fatherland Party, Peru's SL and the remnants
of various Central American groups-are collaborating with Mexican guerrilla
_________________________________________________________________
NUEVO AMANECER PRESS - N.A.P.
Agencia Informativa-traductora y duplicadora de noticias
en apoyo al trabajo de defensa de los Derechos Humanos.
DIRECTOR GENERAL:ROGER MALDONADO-MEXICO
OFICINA ESPA~A: DARRIN WOOD-DIRECTOR
OFICINA USA: SUSANA SARAVIA-DIRECTORA
EQUIPO ASESOR: MEXICO
VISITE LA PA'GINA DE N.A.P:http://www.nap.cuhm.mx/nap0.htm
nuestra direccio'n:amanecer@xxxxxx
*Redistribucion de articulos propios de NAP deben incluir
esta firma. Gracias.




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