AUT: MORE FEAR & LOATHING IN CHIAPAS by John Ross (fwd)

["Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 11:13:20 -0700 (PDT)
From: tedlewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: gx-mexiconews-action@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: MORE FEAR & LOATHING IN CHIAPAS by John Ross

MORE FEAR & LOATHING IN CHIAPAS

THE OLD SOUTH LIVES - CHIAPAS GOVERNOR DEFENDS STATES RIGHTS "UNTIL THE
ULTIMATE CONSEQUENCES"

*Note: Author John Ross is seeking dates for an East Coast speaking tour September 20th-October 4th. If you have any ideas, please contact him in Mexico City.
tel. 011 (525) 510-3376
email: johnross@xxxxxxxxxxx


	SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASA CHIAPAS
(August 31st) - Roberto Albores Guillen, the substitute governor of
Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, is a throwback to the
prototypical  southern U.S. politicians who used to block the school
house doors and sic their dogs and their lynch mobs upon
anti-segregation activists in order to preserve white privilege and what
used to be called "states rights".
	In his 18 months in office Albores, the son of a Comitan rancher (the
equivalent in Chiapas of a Mississippi plantation owner) has
transmogrified himself into the consummate Chiapas patriot who will
defend the sovereignty of this conflictive state until "the ultimate
consequence - even if it should cost me my job."
	"Chiapas for us, the Chiapanecos!" he regularly rants, threatening to
post billboard warnings to that effect, and boot all "outside agitators"
out of the entity. By "outside agitators" Albores includes both Mexicans
and non-Mexicans who travel to Chiapas in support of the rebel Zapatista
Army of National Liberation.
	The substitute governor's obstreperous xenophobia does not fit the
voluminous Albores very well.  A long-time "Chilango" (Mexico City
resident), Albores served as a borough president during Manuel Camacho
Solis's stint as regent (unelected mayor) of the capital.  He returned
to Chiapas in 1994 after a lengthy hiatus in the big city when Camacho
was appointed government peace negotiator and sought unsuccessfully to
strike a treaty with the EZLN. In 1998, in the aftermath of the
horrendous massacre of 46 pro-Zapatista Tzotzil Indians at Acteal in the
mountains above San Cristobal, Albores was appointed interim governor of
Chiapas by the then new Interior Secretary Francisco Labastida - the
massacre cost Labastida's predecessor his job.
	The governor who Albores Guillen replaced, Julio Cesar Ruiz - recently
promoted to a plum job at Mexico's Washington embassy - was also a
substitute governor who took over when Eduardo Robledo, elected in
fraud-riddled 1994 balloting resigned and was shipped off to Argentina.
Albores is Chiapas's fifth governor in six and a half years - only two
of whom have been elected by the citizens of that southern state.
	After Camacho left the long-ruling (70 years) Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 1997, Albores attached his political
fortunes to Labastida, now President Ernesto Zedillo's unofficial choice
for the PRI presidential nomination in 2000.  Carrying out orders from
the capital with the exemplary discipline of a trained bulldog, the
Governor, whom the local press has taken to referring to by his initials
(RAG) has directed his bombast - and firepower - at the rebel
Zapatistas.
	Three months after assuming the substitute governorship, Albores
ordered the dismantlement of four EZLN self-declared "autonomous
municipalities" - ten were killed by the state police and federal army
at El Bosque in May 1998 and hundreds of rebel supporters were jailed,
including a Mexico City art professor who had supervised the painting of
a mural in a Zapatista jungle community - Sergio Valdez was held by
Albores in the state?s maximum lock-up at Cerro Hueco for over a year.
	The governor demonstrated his compassion for Chiapas's Indians when he
sent the rotting cadavers of those killed at El Bosque back to the
community in cardboard boxes.
	Other Albores mischief includes the creation of 13 PRI-governed new
municipalities or counties imposed upon Zapatista "autonomias" in the
Ocosingo region, a sure-fire formula for provoking fresh violence,
Governor RAG justified the creation of the new municipalities by the
PRI's "mandate" in October 1998 local elections, which, never one to
miss an opportunity for self-aggrandizement, the Governor describes as
"historic."  In Ocosingo, 24% of all registered voters cast ballots in
that "historic" election.
	One of Albores Guillen's most celebrated stunts was a bit of jungle
vaudeville wherein he hired PRIistas to dress up as Zapatistas and
pretend to turn in their guns.  In a shameless promo for his
freshly-minted amnesty program last Spring, the governor flew the press
into an Ocosingo jungle resort to witness the gun turn-in. The actors
in the caper were rewarded with 20 head of Sebu cattle and a sports
utility vehicle - and, reportedly, their guns back.  When some weeks
after the performance, the Sebu began to disappear,Albores sent state
police and President Ernesto Zedillo the federal army to occupy suspect
Zapatista hamlets.
	To say that Governor RAG has not endeared himself to the quixotic
Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos would be a gross
understatement.  The rebel leader has nicknamed Albores Guillen
"Croquets" (he looks like one) and accuses him of alcoholic dementia and
pocketing flood relief donations that poured into the state after a
catastrophic October 1988 storm.
	Of late, one of the portly governor's more attention-grabbing ploys has
been to pick a war with neighboring Oaxaca over the Chimilapas reserve
straddling both states - the zone includes some of Mexico's last
untrammeled forests which Chiapas wood poachers have long coveted. In
1986, Zoque Indians, to whom most of the Chimilapas pertain, captured
the brother of another Chiapas governor in the act of clear-cutting
their reserves.
	The long simmering dispute between the two states was apparently
settled in a 1995 agreement protecting the Chimilapas from outside
intrusion.  The agreement was signed by then-Chiapas Secretary of
Government Pablo Salazar and the governor of Oaxaca. Now Salazar has
left the long-ruling (70 years) PRI and will be an opposition coalition
candidate in gubernatorial elections set for July 2nd, 2000 - the same
day as the presidential balloting  - and Albores does not miss an
opportunity to attack the ex-PRIista as a "traitor" who sold out his
beloved Chiapas in the Chimilapas deal, a charge that must not play very
well with current Interior Secretary Diodoro Carrasco who as governor of
Oaxaca in 1995 signed the Chimilapas agreement with Salazar.
	Albores? continuing obeisance to Labastida, who is predestined to win
the PRI presidential nomination in November, seems based more on the
governor's galloping opportunism than on personal conviction.  According
to the political "chisme" (gossip), the life-blood of the cafes of
Tuxtla Gutierrez, the Chiapas state capital, Governor RAG has his heart
set on occupying the Secretary of the Interior slot under a Labastida
presidency.
	When Labastida came to Chiapas for a July campaign swing, Albores
rolled out the red carpet and lavished public moneys on transporting
thousands of PRIistas to pad out sparsely attended rallies, a violation
of campaign ethics frowned upon both by the Institutional Revolutionary
Party management and President Zedillo who had instructed that
government resources should not be used to promote the candidacies of
PRI presidential hopefuls. In an unprecedented ruling, the PRI primary
election watchdog commission was forced to warn the Chiapas governor of
the inappropriateness of his largesse.
	Always spoiling for a fight, "Croquets" was undeterred by the party?s
slap on his thick wrist. In his relentless campaign to provoke the EZLN
into an aggressive response, Albores - and a consortium of friendly
contractors - have been building a network of state roads that penetrate
deeper and deeper into the Lacandon jungle enclave where the Zapatista
high command is encamped.
	The roads, being carved out of the forest under the pretext of bringing
social progress to remote communities, link up military installations in
the region, endanger the neighboring Montes Azules United
Nations-sponsored biosphere, and irritate jungle villages who complain
that the arrival of the soldiers is inevitably acco	mpanied by
truckloads of prostitutes and the sale of alcohol - an item prohibited
in EZLN base communities.
	When this past August 15th, pro-Zapatistas villagers in Amador
Hernandez used civil disobedience to block road surveyors, state police
and federal troops - some of them parachuted in - moved to subdue the
Tzeltal Indian protestors.  Much like southern U.S. sheriffs during the
anti- segregation struggles of the 1960s, military police used batons
and tear gas on the Indian settlers.  The tear gas canisters reportedly
contained an English language warning that they were for "the exclusive
use of the U.S. Army."
	Albores and several television crews immediately helicoptered into the
nearby military base at San Quintin to take charge of the deteriorating
situation. Lashing out at ?outside agitators? like the celebrated
actress Ofelia Medina, a staunch Zapatista supporter, and a handful of
students from the strike-bound National Autonomous University who had
journeyed to Amador Hernandez to document the military incursion, the
Ghiapas governor threatened to have them all thrown in Cerro Hueco for
high felonies unless they speedily abandoned the state.  "Chiapas for us
Chiapanecos!" the pear-shaped, sweating Albores roared to a few Indians
assembled by the PRI for the occasion. Echoing the epithets of petrified
old South states rightists, Albores swore to defend the honor and
sovereignty of a Chiapas to which he has only recently returned against
the impositions of the Zedillo government.
	The lynch mob ambiance stirred up by the Governor kicked in right away
in Lacandon jungle communities under PRI control.  On Saturday, August
21st, a Mexican doctor and two Basque human rights observers were
beaten, robbed, and sexually abused by PRI villagers on a track leading
out of the area that is heavily patrolled by security forces.  Up in San
Cristobal, the capital of the Chiapas highlands, the city council which
is dominated by a right-wing PRI clique known as the ?authentic Coletos?
declared Medina (her most popular film role was playing Mexican icon
Frida Kahlo) "persona non grata" and gave her 72 hours to get out of
town or face the consequences.
	Apparently stimulated by the latest hostilities, Governor RAG staged a
self-congratulatory parade of government workers on Sunday August 22nd
in the state capital. The next day, outraged by Albores? incendiary
proclamations, 8000 Tzotzil Indian supporters of the EZLN descended from
the mountains above San Cristobal to demand RAG?s resignation - among
the marchers was Ofelia Medina in open defiance of the
get-out-of-town-or-else orders.  According to Hermann Bellinghausen,
crack "cronista" for the national daily La Jornada which pays particular
attention to the Chiapas conflict, the march was led by an extremely
skinny mongrel with a sign around its neck that warned "Croquets" he
would wind up like the mangy "chucho" (Tzoztzil slang for dog.)
	Lamentably, most Chiapanecos never got to see Bellinghausen?s chronicle
of the march, the largest in San Cristobal since the Acteal massacre.
Governor RAG?s press policy is to buy off local Chiapas media in
standard PRI fashion and to send his agents out to every newsstand in
the state to confiscate all the Jornadas when they arrive each day at
noon from Mexico City.
*******************************************
Author, poet, and aging bon vivant John Ross is desperately seeking
venues for an East Coast swing September 20th-October 4th.  Any ideas?

To contact John Ross:
  525-510-3376
		johnross@xxxxxxxxxxx
		



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