PABLO SALAZAR - MEXICO - THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM GOES ON

THE PABLO OF GODHOOD

THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM GOES ON

compiled by Dee Finney

THE DREAM AND THE REALITY

5-17-2001

VISION - 5-17-2001

I saw a book cover. The title was 'The Pablo Of Godhood"

The book was black like sky with stars and at the bottom,
behind the title of the book was the yellow sandy earth with
a man riding on a donkey such as we see paintings of Jesus
Christ entering Jerusalem.

When I looked on the internet, there are many wonderful
preachers named Pablo, but the one I'm presenting below
certainly fits the criteria for the book title.

Brother Pablo Salazar - 1999

Pablo suffered kidney failure in 1995, and administers peritoneal dialysis to himself
4 times a day. In spite of his condition, Pablo is always happy to see us, and manifests
a sweet spirit.

An evangelical Christian has been elected as governor of the Chiapas. He is Pablo Salazar,
who is described as a 'dedicated believer'. Salazar is said to have gained the trust of the
Mexican Indians after intervening to save the life of an Indian pastor who was about to be
hanged by a revolutionary lynch mob.

Many Christians in Mexico are denied full religious liberty, according to the secretary
general of the Latin American Bishops' Council, Bishop Carlos Aguilar Retes. He said,
'the law still prevents the Church contributing to important social areas, such as the media,
public education and trades unions.'

For most of the 20th century the Church has been stripped of its legal rights, a legacy of
religious persecution in the 1920s.
The Church gained legal recognition only as recently as 1992.

Chiapas' Long Struggle for Equality

'You can't talk about the Gospel without addressing people's miserable poverty'

by Camille Colatosti

"I want there to be democracy, no more inequality -- I am looking for a life worth living, liberation, just like God says." -- José Perez (EZLN militiaman, captured at Oxchuc, Jan. 4, 1994)

On January 1, 1994, 3,000 members of the mostly indigenous Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) captured the city of San Cristobal, Mexico, the capital of Chiapas, one of the country's poorest states. On the border with Guatemala, 50 to 90 percent of the people here speak a Mayan language, making it "Mexico's Indian heartland," according to Harvard's John Womack, Jr., author of Rebellion in Chiapas (The New Press, 1999).

While 14,000 Mexican troops forced a Zapatista retreat from Cristobal on January 2 and by January 12 a ceasefire had been declared, many say that peace has never been reached and that the Zapatista rebellion has shaped the region.

According to Womack, the cause of the rebellion is "an age-old problem," with the wealthy using all the power available to it "to squeeze every bit of labor and every bit of money it can out of the poor people who are the great majority there and who also happen to be of Mayan descent."

A long history of poverty

Chiapas covers almost 29,000 square miles and has a population of over 3.2 million. Of all of Mexico's states, it is the most agricultural, with coffee and cattle as its major crops. A poor state, the average per capita annual income is $2,000-$3,000, compared to $5,000 nationally and $30,000 in some northern states. Fifty-four percent of the people in Chiapas are malnourished.

The infrastructure of Chiapas is also severely lacking. While 55 percent of Mexico's electricity is generated from Chiapas, only about 20 percent of homes in Chiapas have electricity.

Chiapas also has the worst education in the country -- 72 out of 100 children do not finish the first grade. More than half of the schools offer only a third-grade education. Half of the schools have only one teacher for all the courses offered. In 1989, there were 16,058 classrooms in Mexico, and only 96 were in indigenous zones.

The poverty of Chiapas has roots that go back to the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The conquest led to the mass enslavement of Indians, even though slavery was technically illegal.

By the 19th century, great haciendas of sugar and sisal -- a cactus-like plant whose fibers are used to make rope, rugs and other goods -- employed thousands of pauperized workers, most of whom remained bound to wealthy planters by unpayable debts.

Rebellion in Chiapas also has a long history. In 1545, the first Catholic bishop of Chiapas, Bartolome de las Casas, protested the exploitation of the native population. In 1712, indigenous people tried to overthrow the hacienda system. From 1810-21, Mexicans fought to win their independence from Spain. Then, 100 years later, Mexicans fought again, waging the Mexican Revolution, which overthrew a dictatorship and promised liberal reforms that would eliminate poverty and provide education, health care and land for all, but, according to Womack, these promises went largely unrealized. Inequality and poverty remained, especially among indigenous peoples.

Nevertheless, an article of the Mexican Constitution (adopted in 1917, after the revolution) did change the shape of Chiapas. Article 27 recognized villages as corporate bodies entitled to tenure in agricultural lands and guaranteed grants of federal or expropriated private lands -- ejidos -- to villages that needed them. This article inspired many to move into the jungles of Chiapas to form villages.

Groups of landless neighbors would find grantable land, occupy it, secure the perimeter, and declare a community. They would fight to protect the land and petition for official recognition. Once recognized, they would petition for an ejido.

By 1960, the jungle was transformed with new remote villages which largely functioned with political autonomy. They ruled themselves through town meetings and village assemblies. However, they failed to achieve economic independence. Without a real plan, most newly formed villages grew coffee or raised cattle, and so remained subject to the large export markets.

Continued poverty and inequality contributed to widespread popular unrest. January 1, 1994: NAFTA and Zapatistas

Tensions and repression increased in 1994 in response to two crises, crises from which Chiapas -- and perhaps Mexico as a whole -- has not recovered.

The U.S., Mexican and Canadian governments initiated the first crisis. It came in the form of economic policy -- the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This agreement, which took effect January 1, 1994, removed all agricultural tariffs. This effectively lowered the price of Mexican crops and lowered both payments to Mexico's poorest producers and wages to the country's poorest workers. The value of corn, for instance, fell dramatically. Even worse for Mexican farmers, U.S. corn can be sold in Mexico at 60 percent of the cost of the Mexican crop. NAFTA also paved the way for abuse of the environment. Logging corporations, such as Boise Cascade, now have unregulated access to exploit the forests.

But most controversial of all was Mexico's repeal of Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution, the article making communal lands -- ejidos -- available to villagers and protecting communal land holdings from privatization.

The second crisis of 1994 was, say many, precipitated by NAFTA. That was the rebellion on January 1 by the Zapatistas. When 3,000 armed members of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) descended on Chiapas' capital of San Cristobal, they declared war on the Mexican army. Their aims, clearly stated in their declaration, were to overthrow the Mexican government. A key reason for this action, they explained, was to implement land reform. The leaders were largely indigenous and fought for a better life in Chiapas. For this reason, their cause was seen with general sympathy throughout the country.

The fact that the Zapatistas were extreme underdogs may also have led many to view them with sympathy. The invasion came as a surprise to the Mexican government, but within 24 hours, 14,000 Mexican troops forced a Zapatista retreat. By January 12, a ceasefire was declared and peace talks began.

The peace negotiations centered on what has come to be called "the Indian question," not the attempted government overthrow. While the EZLN may have wanted to take over Mexico, they soon realized that this goal was unrealistic.

In 1996, about one-and-one-half-years after negotiations began, an agreement was reached -- the San Andres Accords -- which committed the government to giving Indian communities more autonomy. But the Mexican congress never ratified the agreement.

Military occupation -- and faith-based resistance

Instead, the government has waged low-intensity warfare in Chiapas. The bulk of the army -- a total of almost 80,000 troops -- has gradually moved into the state, three times the level of occupation at the beginning of the conflict. Chiapas contains a combined total of 300 barracks, camps and checkpoints.

"In Chiapas, there are 20 to 25 military vehicles that pass through different roads where I live and control all the means of transportation," says Manuel Hernandez Aguilar, an indigenous Mayan from a grassroots faith community called El Pueblo Creyente (People of Faith). "When we go out, they ask us for ID and treat us as if we are foreigners in our land -- but we are the ones who are the original people of this land."

Aguilar presents an example of the kind of leader and the kind of movement that had been building in modern Chiapas since the 1960s. El Pueblo Creyente is an organization of Catholic lay people who gather to share common experiences, and to oppose repression of local indigenous Mayan communities.

"My principal work," explains Aguilar, "is to wake our people up to what's happening. We want people to reflect on what the Gospel means to them. This is not just a spiritual evangelism, though. We also deal with human needs -- and how Jesus worked hard to meet the needs of the poor and change their situation.

"We carry out our work so that people aren't left behind and forgotten. We want our church to be alive, not dead. Our church announces the good that happens and denounces the bad.

"Our work has much to do with poverty, because there is a lot of poverty. You can't talk about the Gospel without addressing people's miserable poverty."

Aguilar also works with a group of organizations that are independent from the church, ARIC (the Rural Association of Collective Interests). As he explains, "These are independent and democratic, and put into action the reflections that we do in our faith groups. ARIC is looking for an end to this poverty. But this work is not looked upon well by government authorities."

Aguilar continues, "Because we carry out this work, our diocese is persecuted. Our Bishop Samuel Ruiz was threatened with death and there was an attempt on the lives of many leaders for the work we do with the living Gospel."

Since 1995, government authorities backed by the ruling PRI party have closed 35 churches and chapels in Chiapas. In 1998, Mexico deported Thomas Hansen of Pastors for Peace and Miguel Chanteau, a French Catholic priest. Chanteau, who worked in Chiapas for 30 years and was a close associate of Ruiz, had criticized the Mexican government for its violence toward indigenous people.

Paramilitary violence: the Acteal massacre

In addition to the army, Chiapas is plagued with numerous paramilitary troops, organized by both the cattle barons and the army. The paramilitary has been reportedly responsible for numerous human rights abuses, from searching homes without warrants, to stealing livestock and food, to erecting arbitrary roadblocks, to rapes and murders.

A year ago, Asna Jahanjir, a United Nations official assigned to monitor the status of human rights in Chiapas, reported that "extra-judicial executions are widespread and ongoing. Entire communities are forced to flee to makeshift refugee camps."

One of the worst incidents to take place since the 1994 rebellion is the Acteal massacre, in which 45 civilians were killed on December 12, 1997.

Kerry Appel, director of the Human Bean Company, a fair-trade coffee company based in Denver, was in Acteal at the time of the massacre and witnessed the killings. He has been traveling to Mexico for 30 years, buying coffee directly from producers in Chiapas and then selling it in the U.S. Because he eliminates the middleman, or "coyote," he pays producers about $1.50 a pound for their coffee instead of the usual 40 cents. Acteal is a Tzotzil Indian village where the coffee for the Human Bean Company is grown.

"Women and children fled down the steep mountain path toward the valley, as armed men shot them from behind," Appel recounts. "Some who reached the underbrush by the river below were discovered by the assassins when the babies' cries gave them away. ... The assassins cut open the stomach of a young pregnant woman, tore her unborn baby out and cut it up. A baby less than one year old survived because her mother covered her with her own body and received all the bullets. One baby was shot in the head at close range.

"The massacre went on for almost five hours ... while dozens of armed civil guards stood on the road above and did nothing.

"In the end, 45 of Human Bean's coffee producers had been massacred and as many as 5,000 were refugees in the Tzotzil community of Pohlo."

Later, Appel learned that there was no coffee available for him to buy. "The same Mexican-government-backed paramilitary groups that had committed the massacre ... then stole the coffee of the dead and the refugees to sell it," he says.

The coffee processing plant in Acteal -- where Human Bean coffee is processed -- was then occupied by the Mexican army, an action that would have been unthinkable when the Mexican constitutions' autonomy-promoting Article 27 had been in effect. Dominated by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the government had become aggressively intolerant of the independent villages of Chiapas, villages that had been independent, in some cases, since their founding.

Election defeats for the PRI

The decision of the PRI to crack down on those who seek autonomy may have ultimately led to its defeat in the latest round of national elections.

In last July's presidential elections, opposition candidate Vicente Fox defeated the PRI favorite--the first time in 71 years that the PRI lost its hold on the presidency. Likewise, the PRI lost the governorship of Chiapas to opposition candidate Pablo Salazar, an independent representing an alliance of parties including Fox's National Action Party (PAN) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution, which supports the Zapatistas. Salazar helped negotiate the 1996 peace accords.

Fox says he is willing to respect the San Andres Accords. During his campaign, he also said that he could resolve the Chiapas conflict in "15 minutes." He promised to withdraw the army to its pre-1994 positions.

But very quickly Fox seemed to be having second thoughts. In October 2000, he suggested that "an army pullout might not happen prior to an accord," and would happen only when "law and order" have been established.

As Womack puts it, "I don't think elections solve very much, but they do something. The fact that the PRI lost the election in Chiapas doesn't mean that all the bad guys are gone and only good guys will run things, but the wealthy have lost some of the official leverage that they used to have. They haven't lost property by any means -- but things have changed."

Still, he continues, "the people in Mexico need to continue what they have been doing for many years: figuring out what really are the obstacles to their own popular organizations and trying to organize around those obstacles, to undermine them. They need to put together formal organizations in the economy as producers, consumers, credit cooperatives -- develop their own material base and use that base to develop formal political organizations that can provide them protection. This can happen only from local places and spread from each local place. It can't be dictated from above. It has to come from popular organizing -- and that is the work of a lifetime."

Camille Colatosti is The Witness' staff writer.

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From ............. WORLD magazine

[ P.O. Box 2330, Asheville, NC 28802 ............. wldmailbag@aol.com ]

FEBRUARY 3, 1996

EVANGELICALS ARE FROZEN OUT OF CHIAPAS NEGOTIATIONS

By Mindy Belz

When Zapatista rebels showed up last week to sign a preliminary agreement with the Mexican government, they brought their trademark black ski masks but left important factions in their region behind.

Ever since the rebels took arms against the government two years ago, demanding autonomy from Mexico City and justice for beleaguered coffee farmers and peasants, evangelicals in the region have been caught in the middle. Unable to work within the Catholic status quo and unwilling to devote themselves to Comandante Marcos, the Zapatista leader, Protestant believers have been viewed with suspicion by all parties. Worse, they have been subjected to persecution and turned into desplezados, or refugees, for failing to choose sides.

[ IOW - for being Christlike ..... JP ]

Even as World Fellowship of Reformed Churches representatives met with Mexican leaders on behalf of evangelicals, one evangelical was murdered and two others kidnapped in the mountain town of San Juan Chamula late last year. At least five more deaths have occurred since then in an ongoing pattern of violence against Protestants.

Evangelical teaching has taken off in Chiapas as it has in no other state in Mexico. In 1970 there were 900 Presbyterians in the state; according to the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico, there are 400,000 today.

Presbyterians and Pentecostals are the two largest evangelical groups and together they comprise more than 60 percent of the state's population, while the national average is more than 80 percent Roman Catholic.

The eagerness of new Protestant believers to form churches and exhibit a reformed lifestyle stirs resentment in villages dominated by the [Roman] Catholic Church and village bosses called caciques. Caciques often hold licenses that enable them to extract fees on everything from soft drink vending machines to the sale of votive candles at [Roman] Catholic altars.

Families who first of all quit attending the [Roman] Catholic Church, then abstain from religious festivals where kickbacks from the sale of liquor and other licensed items benefit the village leaders, all threaten the economic stranglehold of the caciques. Some evangelicals who refuse to attend the festivals have reported being arrested and harassed.

Chiapas is also the most poverty-stricken Mexican state and contains the greatest concentration of illiterate citizens. Many areas Iack basic services like electricity, running water, and drainage. At least four Indian groups have their own lauguage and don't speak Spanish. In 1994 families from the heavily forested areas, primarily evangelicals, fled their homes rather than join Comandante Marcos's army. Since they were accustomed to coming to the town of Las Margaritas periodically to sell coffee and other products, many settled there temporarily, living in shelters provided by the city or by evangelical churches. At least half have now returned to their homes and to an uneasy co-existence with rebel forces.

The rebels launched their uprising Jan. 1, 1994, the same day Mexico agreed to NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada. In a few brief weeks of fighting, 145 people were killed before government forces called a ceasefire.

The rebels, who represent the Indian groups, have pursued their cause largely through peaceful means since then, but military tensions have remained high.

The Zapatista National Liberation Army controls a number of routes and villages. Negotiations continued with only near-success last year; Zapatista demands for reforms of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party [known by the Spanish abbreviation, PRI] at the national level were met with government promises to provide educational television by satellite to the region.

But this month the elusive Marcos emerged from his jungle stronghold to turn over his AR-15 automatic rifle and 45 caliber pistol to the Red Cross, signaling a bend in the road. "This is an act of peaceful will and a gesture that will contribute to a solution to the problems of the country," said Roman Catholic Bishop Samuel Ruiz, who has helped mediate the peace talks.

The signing of a preliminary agreement, by Marcos deputy Comandante Tachos, followed on Jan. 19. What it resolved, according to a government statement, were demands to give the Indians more rights to elect officials according to local custom and to adopt more autonomous judicial practices. The rebels were not granted property rights they sought as the government continues to safeguard its oil rights in the petroleum-rich state. Evangelicals were not at the bargaining table, so their concerns weren't even discussed, let alone resolved, by the agreement.

Leading up to the signing, a team of missionaries along with American and Mexican clergy traveled to San Andres Larrainzar, site of the negotiations, to meet with negotiators on both sides and to see the prospects for evangelicals firsthand. They hoped to serve as ombudsmen for Protestant believers who had not been granted a place at the table.

Larrainzar sits atop a majestic string of mountains at 6,000 feet, where peasants in brightly colored Mayan clothing harvest corn off sheer precipices and strain against loads of firewood. Arriving at the town plaza, the delegation was greeted by side-by-side shrines to Jesus and Comandante Marcos, and a metal detector. They passed through security to the [Roman] Catholic church where 18 Zapatistas, led by Comandante Tachos, awaited their first meeting with evangelical representatives.

Evangelicals were able to discuss incidents of persecution while Zapatistas aired general grievances about the discrimination and suffering of the Indian people and their need for jobs and education. Bringing the two sides together, oddly, were Sen. Pablo Salazar, an evangelical who heads the government's commission on the negotiations, and [Roman Catholic] Bishop Ruiz, a strong proponent of liberation theology and a father-figure to the Indian groups represented by the Zapatistas. Members of the delegation had information that he had condoned persecution of evangelicals, but it was not in evidence that day.

According to Eric Perrin, a South Carolina pastor who is president of the World Fellowship of Reformed Churches, the Zapatistas are obviously influenced by both liberation theology and Marxism. "But they are not a communist movement," he said. Another delegate, Cecilio Lajara, prayed for the Zapatistas and for the bishop at the meeting's end, but no concrete agreements were reached.

Later the delegation visited a nearby refugee compound where 300 members of a Pentecostal church now live. Like others, they were run from their homes during fighting and cannot now afford to return. Or, their homes are gone.

The delegation also visited a nearby group of 10 Presbyterian families living in a one-room house. Children were asleep on the concrete floor and adults would later sleep outside in the mountain air. Six months ago these families had tried to establish a church in their village, five miles away. Thugs, they said, broke up one of their meetings and hauled men outside to beat them. A police report only led to more violence: Two of their homes were burned and most of their homes were looted. They were brought by their assailants in two trucks to their current quarters and have not had the resources or the will to return. Despite the easing of tensions among government offficials, Catholic establishment and Indian rebels, it's clear these families have not yet found an ally.

- END QUOTE -

WORLD magazine Masthead - FEBRUARY 3, 1996

"The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein."Ñ PSALM 24:1

Publisher: Joel Belz Editor: Marvin Olasky Managing Editor: Nickolas S. Eicher National Editor: Joe Maxwell NationalCorrespondents: Roy Maynard International Editor: Mindy Belz

Correspondents: Cal Thomas [Washington]; Daniel Griswold [London]; Carl F. H. Henry [religion]: Forest M. Mims III[science]; Susan Olasky [politics]; Helen Durham [education]; Arsenio Orteza [music]; Gene Edward Veith [television];Pamela Johnson [movies]; George Grant [books]

Contributors: David Chilton, William H. Smith, R.C Sproul Jr, Gary Thomas, Peter Wehner, Margie Haack Associates : Larry Burkett, Charles Colson

Editorial Assistants: Katrina Gettman Researcher: Joseph Slife Creative Director: Nathaniel Belz Art Director: David K. Freeland Illustration: Rich Bishop, Grant Collier Distribution Manager: Courtney Miller Marketing Coordinator: Kathy Cook Executive Assistant: June McGraw

Send Ads To: WORLD, attn. Doss Church, 85 Tunnel Road, Suite 12, Asheville, NC 28805; telephone: [704]] 253-8063 Address: P. O. Box 2330, Asheville, NC 28802 Deliveries: 85 Tunnel Road, Suite 12, Asheville, NC 28805; telephone: [704] 253-8063

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MISSION STATEMENT: To help Christians apply the Bible to their understanding of and response to everyday current events. To achieve this by reporting the news on a weekly basis in an interesting, accurate and arresting fashion.

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Letters to the editor should be sent to WORLD Mailbag, P.O. Box 2330, Asheville, NC 28802. Letters may also be sent to our America Online address [wldmailbag@aol.com]. If you wish your letter to be considered for publication, remember to include your name and address.

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From: http://global-initiatives.net/chiapas,_mexico.htm

Templo Cristiano, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, Mexico:

A Story of Faith and Faithfulness

November, 1997

It was 1989. With eager friends - a group led by construction guru, Mike Steffes, we embarked for a mysterious, previously unknown city in southern Mexico. Mike had established a niche in the Phoenix building community by building fast food restaurants. Now it was to be a sanctuary in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, Mexico. Mike had accepted the challenge of leading a rag-tag team from the Biltmore Church of Phoenix, Arizona; a team with doubtful skill. Whatever other limitations the team members may have had, they were not at all afraid of hard work, they were great friends who had walked together in Christ for years, loved to be together, full of fun, eager for the adventure. It did not matter that they had never heard of Tuxtla, until a few months before.

The airport serving the city of Tuxtla is located on a high plateau amid the tropical green rugged country side with mountains all around, and jungle beyond. Tuxtla is the capital city of Chiapas with a population of about 800,000. Chiapas is said to be the poorest of the Mexican states with more in common with its bordering neighbor, Guatemala, to the east, than with its neighboring states to the north and west. The Pacific Ocean is to the south and the Gulf of Mexico and the Yucatan to the north. It is situated in the center of a narrowing funnel of land which turns east, and abruptly north encircling the Gulf of Mexico. It is known for its poverty and the highest percentage of indigenous Indians in Mexico; the diminutive, noble and oppressed ancestors of the Maya.

As we gathered in the small sanctuary of our host congregation, we slowly began to realize that we were among a unique - a very special people. We had come with the stereotypes of those who lived in the southwestern United States where the poorest sons of Mexico cross the hostile desert barrier between two very different countries to find a “better” life as migrant workers, housekeepers and laborers. Here we found a fascinating and loving mixture of prominence and poverty. Thoroughly mixed throughout the small auditorium were the highly educated, sophisticated, professionals seamlessly worshiping with the poor, the street children, the illiterate.

The joy, the spontaneity, the authenticity, the transparency of worship and fellowship drew us in immediately. Eager to test my three years of high school Spanish I turned to a small middle-aged to elderly man next to me and carefully articulated my greeting in Spanish. I anticipated the bright eyes of recognition and an appropriate response in Spanish. Instead, in a kind and confused bewilderment, indicating he had no understanding of what I had just said, he responded in broken English, “I very sorry. I no speak English.” Pride dashed I sought out translation for any further communication.

On the platform leading the singing during this first service was a young attorney, Pablo Salazar. He led and participated in worship with a strong and pleasant voice. There seemed little need for leadership for each person participated fully in the singing, praying and in eager and vocal support of any testimony or sermon.

This thriving church had no pastor. It did not seem to need one for everyone we met was enthusiastic in ministry. Pablo was a visible leader - a successful and prominent lawyer with a heart for the Indian population and the poor surrounding the church. With him were many others of all walks of life who worked long hours each day, but found no shortage of time to share their faith with their neighbors or serve through the church.

The church’s story began to unfold. In 1976 pastor Clever Salazar, Pablo’s brother, stood on an obscure corner in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Tuxtla and shared his faith with Maria Lopez de Cigarroa. Maria’s home was just two doors from the corner where she accepted Christ. On December 5 of 1976 Maria opened the doors of her home to pastor Salazar and seven others to begin a new church. Soon, celebrating her new found faith, she had scripture painted on here adobe walls and a cleanly swept clay floor was scattered with make-shift chairs for the vibrant growing congregation.

From the beginning this was a visionary congregation which was always grateful for pastoral leadership, but never reliant upon it. Pastor Clever was called to evangelize and plant churches. He could not remain with this “established” congregation too long. They must accept responsibility for their own leadership. As they did they began reaching the poor and the professional, the educated and the illiterate. Each new believer was immediately put to work, “according to his or her gifts.” The church grew.

Soon the new congregation was standing on the sidewalk peering through the cracks in the wall and the open door in order to participate in a packed worship service at Maria’s. Frequently as the congregation mixed on the side walk for fellowship outside Maria’s they would talk about the abandon corner across the street. The vision soon became to great to contain and the eager congregation concluded that the corner property was “held” for them. A member of the fellowship, Belisario Vasquez went in search of the owner of the property. All he knew was that she had once lived in Cintalap, nearby community, and that her name was Maria. He tells the story of how the Lord led him right to the owners home.

The new congregation was organized as the Third Church of the Nazarene with 97 people in 1978. Soon after the eager fellowship raised the money to purchase the corner property and in 1979 Long Beach Nazarene helped build the first small chapel. That was the beginning New Testament growth and ministry - During 1980 a prison ministry began with the conversion of 22 inmates, the planting of two new churches, and the quadrupling of the churches giving. From the beginning the congregation has committed itself to personal equipping and evangelism, church planting and strong ministry among the poor, imprisoned and neglected. At the same time the fellowship has had an unprecedented reach into community leadership. With a vision to train young people for ministry the congregation began a three story “training center.” Soon they had outgrown the “miracle corner” and were looking over their shoulder to a third corner of this obscure intersection.

Seven years after falling in love with the people of Third Church Tuxtla, in September of 1996 my long-time friend, Dr. Jonathan Salgado, a ten-year professor of preaching at the Nazarene Bible College in Colorado Springs, Colorado, called inviting me to join him and his wife, Maggie, in Tuxtla for their installation as pastor. He told me of his call to this special fellowship, now called the Templo Christiano of Tuxtla Gutierrez. I asked if he knew of my relationship with the church. He said he did not. Amazed at how God works and delighted for the invitation I met Jonathan and Maggie in Tuxtla in October of 1996.

On the day of the Installation of Jonathan and Maggie the Tuxtla Templo Christiano, situated on that dream corner in a large fan-shaped sanctuary seating 1500. The sanctuary which was only dreams and plans when I first met the people was filled. In the courtyard were brightly colored Pepsi tents set for a fiesta celebrating the arrival of their new pastors. Maria still lives in her adobe home, now with a concrete floor and newly stuccoed walls. Though nearly illiterate she has become the resident spiritual counselor and prayer warrior for all ages and classes in the church. Pablo is the powerful and respected senator from Chiapas, a couple has taken up the ministry to prisoners and takes a Sunday meal to the prison every Sunday afternoon Chelly Lopez, a business woman, attractive, well educated, well-dressed, leads twelve to fifteen to Christ and into fellowship each week. The average profession of faith for the congregation each month is 20 to thirty. These people had planted two other churches, neglecting their own official organization. Dr. Gonzalez, a medical doctor, has organized 16 prayer cells throughout the city. All of this done without pastoral leadership. A member of the congregation, Dr. Roldan Salazar, the former Director of Vocational Education for the Mexico Department of Education, has resigned his government position and is prepared to give leadership to the visionary Ministry Training Center.

The church averages 800 in worship each Sunday with three full-time pastors and ten lay pastors giving the equal of full-time leadership to numerous ministries while holding down full-time jobs. The platform is filled with a robed choir and orchestra. The congregation continues to be unique blend of prominence and poverty where all are welcomed with genuine Christian love.

The original chapel functions as a children’s education center and the “training center” is Sunday school space waiting to be finished and filled with those being trained for ministry throughout Mexico and Central America.

I stood amid the smell of traditional foods and the sound of easy laughter trying to understand the genius of this great church. While Jonathan Salazar, Pablo’s talented and handsome younger brother, with mike in hand and the full baritone voice Latin “radio personality” of a interviewed and joked with the crowd my eyes caught the key to the church in three persons. To one side was quiet, kindly, dignified Juvenal who for ten years had arrived at the church site before day break to make adobe bricks before he went on to a full day’s work. He believed that God would some day make it possible for the church to build a great worship center and he wanted the be ready with the necessary bricks. He posed proudly next to the thirty foot wall which contained his visionary labor. In another corner was Maria, surrounded by those who had been brought into the Kingdom and discipled by this small woman who had accepted Christ on the corner just a few yards from the imposing sanctuary.

Then, I turned to see a sight that brings emotion and conviction with every memory. It was Pablo, once the song-leading young attorney, now the powerful Senator - the man the Mexican government trusts with the negotiations between the government and the Zapatista guerilla leader, Markos. In an obscure corner, near the gate to the courtyard, Pablo had found a small girl on crutches - a street child with her mother. In dirty tattered clothes and, the girl, with head bowed leaning on a single crutch, they shyly watched, afraid to venture into the boisterous crowd. Hardly believing, I saw the Pablo in dark suit, white shirt and tie - every bit a senator - now kneeling on the dusty concrete before the child. He took her small face in his hands. Looking into her face he and quietly talk with her. Soon he embraced her, kissed her and greeted her mother. Still on his knees he turned and called out to his friends gesturing to come and meet his new friend. Soon there was a line of people, possibly fifteen or twenty, in single file - all ages, every social class, educated and illiterate. Each one bent low to kiss, embrace and welcome the small child and her mother.

Off, alone, to the side I got a glimpse of Pablo. He stood with tears trickling down his cheeks as he watched one more welcomed into the family. And, I understood the “genious” of the Church - this time at Templo Christiano, Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, Mexico. Christ had found a home in the hearts of a people who freely loved all those they touched.

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Chiapas Indian Pastor Sentenced To Be Hung By Lynch Mob Saved After Intervention By Evangelical Senator

Extraordinary Reunion Between Two At The "Unity" Conference For Indian and Mexican Pastors Organized By Latin American Indian Ministries

By Dan Wooding in Chiapas

CHIAPAS, MEXICO (March 9, 1998) - An extraordinary reunion took place on Saturday, March 7, between an Indian pastor who was sentenced to be hung by an angry lynch mob and the courageous evangelical senator who saved his life.

The pastor, Manuel Arias, a Tzotzil Indian, had been arrested by a lynch mob of supporters of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, known by the Spanish acronym EZLN, who have been conducting a four year armed struggle against the Mexican government. His detention took place shortly after the massacre of 45 Indians on December 22 in the town of Acteal in the Chenalho area of Chiapas.

His life was spared only after the intervention of Chiapas senator, Pablo Salazar, the first evangelical ever to be voted into the Mexican Congress since the revolution took place against Spain some 170 years ago. The emotional reunion took place at a special "unity" conference organized and held in the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of the southern Mexico state, by Latin American Indian Ministries of Orange, California.

In an exclusive interview, Pastor Arias, whose evangelical church is located close to Acteal, said, "I was arrested because I was falsely accused of transporting weapons for the paramilitary groups who are opposing the Zapatistas. They had seen me helping the [Christian Indian] brothers and many times I had asked the president of the municipality to help me with transportation when I had food for the refugees.

"I think the real reason for my arrest was because they were angry with me as I had told my brethren not to get involved in any of the conflicts or fights because that's not what the Bible says. But they said that I had been involved in the conflicts, but I have not. Perhaps I was a barrier for the Zapatistas [who wanted support from his congregation] and that is why they arrested me. "I Saw The Ropes Being Prepared" "When I was detained in a town in the municipality of Chenalho, I saw that they were preparing the ropes to hang me because they thought if they killed me they would have the open space to bring all the other Christians into the fight. My little brother was there and saw what was happening and he discovered that brother Pablo Salazar was in the area. He ran to him and told him what was happening and thanks to him, I was liberated and thanks to God I am here and free."

Senator Salazar then took up the story, "When I heard what was happening to Manuel, I told the Zapatistas and other groups there, 'I know Manuel. He is a pastor. A man of peace. He is a good man, a preacher of the Word.' I also said that I knew that he has never taken a weapon and he has never trained or helped anyone to be involved in conflict. I then demanded they liberate Manuel because he was unfairly detained.

"I told the Zapatistas, 'Unless you liberate Manuel, I will denounce what is going on here in a national way through the media. I believe that it was not because I was a senator, that I should help him, but because I knew Manuel, and because I am a believer in Jesus Christ. Thank God, they did free him and he was not hung."

Fighting back the tears, Manuel Arias then said, "What can I say? When I was liberated, I said to God, 'Thank you for this freedom and thank you for Brother Pablo Salazar, because it is because of him that I am a free man and my life has been spared."

Then, turning to the senator, he added, "I have known him for years and I know he has been chosen by God for the position of senator so he can represent God and the church here in Chiapas and also so he can help the Indian people."

Senator Salazar was later to address the conference and standing at his side as his Indian interpreter was none other than the pastor whose life he has helped to save!

David Tamez, the executive director of Latin American Indian Ministries and also the Latin America Director of Every Home for Christ of Colorado Springs, Colorado, explained the purpose of the historic gathering, "We have held this conference to help bring unity among the churches in Chiapas, especially among the Indian pastors and the mestizo (Mexican) pastors.

"Many times the mestizo pastors don't know they are part of the same body of believers. At the same time, many of the Indian pastors in the highlands are suffering persecution because of their faith and the Bible says that 'when one part of the body suffers, we all suffer.' So the purpose of the conference is to bring unity. We have had over 200 people here from 15 different Indian tribes from all over Mexico and also from Guatemala and they have experienced fellowship and they are exchanging experiences and encouraging each other."

Dr. Dale Kietzman, Founder and President of Latin American Indian Ministries, said, "We feel our role in this situation in Chiapas is to offer support to believers who are fearing for their lives in this region torn by political and religious strife.

"On the one hand you have the four-year military conflict between the Zapatista revolution and the government. Add to that the struggle between the growing evangelical Christian populace, which some say is now as high as 40 percent, and the traditionalists or Christo-pagan Catholics who mix their old pagan practices with the Roman Catholic faith. They have run evangelical Christians off their farmlands and from their tribal communities, burning houses and killing men, women and children because of their refusal to continue in a pagan lifestyle. This has been going on for 30 years, unchecked by the authorities.

"Then, of course, there is the fact that Chiapas is the poorest state in Mexico. When you mix all this together you truly see a hurting people. This grieves the heart of God."

So then I asked David Tamez what could Christians outside of Chiapas do to help with the tense situation there at this time? "The best thing that Christians can do for the Indian and mestizo pastors is to pray for them, because God is the only one who can bring peace to this conflict area."

During the conference, an Indian choir sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" in their own language. It was very moving to hear them sing this great hymn of the church. For these Christian Indians were only too aware that they are in a spiritual battle for their very survival in Chiapas.

For further information on Latin American Indian Ministries, write: PO Box 2050, Orange, CA 92859, USA.

Dan Wooding (assistcomm@cs.com; www.assist-ministries.com) is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times). Wooding is also the author of some 35 books, (the latest of which is a thriller called RED HAND), a syndicated columnist and a commentator on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC. A photograph of Pastor Arias and Senator Salazar together, can be E-mailed to you on request from Dan Wooding at: assistcomm@cs.com

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CHIAPAS INDIAN PASTOR SENTENCED TO BE HUNG BY LYNCH MOB SAVED AFTER INTERVENTION BY EVANGELICAL SENATOR

In March, I was able to witness an extraordinary reunion that took place in Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital city of the southern Mexico state of Chiapas, between an Indian pastor who was sentenced to be hung by an angry lynch mob and the courageous evangelical senator who saved his life.

The pastor, Manuel Arias, a Tzotzil Indian, had been arrested by a lynch mob of supporters of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, known by the Spanish acronym EZLN, who have been conducting a four year armed struggle against the Mexican government. His detention took place shortly after the massacre of 45 Indians on December 22, 1997, in the town of Acteal in the Chenalho area of Chiapas.

His life was spared only after the intervention of Chiapas senator, Pablo Salazar, the first evangelical ever to be voted into the Mexican Congress since the revolution took place against Spain some 170 years ago. The emotional reunion took place at a special "unity" conference organized and held in Tuxtla Gutierrez, by Latin American Indian Ministries of Orange, California.

In an interview, Pastor Arias, whose evangelical church is located close to Acteal, said, "I was arrested because I was falsely accused of transporting weapons for the paramilitary groups who are opposing the Zapatistas. They had seen me helping the [Christian Indian] brothers and many times I had asked the president of the municipality to help me with transportation when I had food for the refugees.

"When I was detained in a town in the municipality of Chenalho, I saw that they were preparing the ropes to hang me because they thought if they killed me they would have the open space to bring all the other Christians into the fight. My little brother was there and saw what was happening and he discovered that brother Pablo Salazar was in the area. He ran to him and told him what was happening and thanks to him, I was liberated and thanks to God I am here and free."

Senator Salazar was later to address the conference and standing at his side as his Indian interpreter was none other than the pastor whose life he had helped to save!

Dr. Dale Kietzman, Founder and President of Latin American Indian Ministries and Chairman of ASSIST International, said, "We feel our role in this situation in Chiapas is to offer support to believers who are fearing for their lives in this region torn by political and religious strife.

"Then, of course, there is the fact that Chiapas is the poorest state in Mexico. When you mix all this together you truly see a hurting people. This grieves the heart of God."

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From: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/8td/8td072.html

Home > Christianity Today Magazine

Christianity Today, November 16, 1998

Mexico

"The evangelical church is steadily becoming a visible presence in Mexican society."

Juan M. Isáis

OUT OF THE SALT SHAKER

For nearly 400 years, the evangelical faith and the study of the Bible were prohibited here. As early as the midsixteenth century, Lutherans who had come with the Spanish conquerors suffered persecution, and the Holy Inquisition was in force in Mexico longer than in many other countries. Eventually, under President Benito Juárez (1806-72), a growing reaction to the Catholic church's power led the government to enact anticlerical legislation, which remained in force until this decade and declared the following restrictions:

(1) No church could legally own property;
(2) foreigners could not serve as priests or pastors;
(3) worship services should be held exclusively in temples or churches, not in public buildings;
(4) clergy could not directly or indirectly criticize government authorities;
(5) clergy could not vote or participate in politics;
(6) mass media should not be used to promote religion; and
(7) government leaders supposedly should never participate in religious ceremonies.

But in the early 1990s, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari succeeded in reforming the Constitution. As a result, any religious association may now bring in foreign missionaries or pastors provided they are officially affiliated with the church they serve, have their financial support guaranteed for the duration of their service, and fulfill the requirements of the laws of immigration (which are liberally applied). Compare this to the time when foreign missionaries ministered for decades by returning as "tourists."

Also, churches now can hold evangelistic campaigns or healing services in public places. Recently, for example, an evangelical group conducted a Communion service at the Monument to the Mexican Revolution of 1910 in Mexico City. Several large rallies with foreign evangelists have been held in the Plaza of the Constitution. And it is no longer uncommon to see open-air meetings where thousands of people pray, sing, and even take offerings in public.

However, Catholic persecution and hostility against evangelicals persists in many parts of the country. In Chiapas, more than 30,000 evangelical Indians have been expelled from their homes, property, and schools and now live as refugees. In 1990, I was part of a group of 160 evangelicals in Mexico City who had climbed a mountain south of the city to hold an all-night prayer meeting. Thousands of Catholics were incited by a local priest, Ernesto Pérez, to chase us on foot for more than five kilometers. We were hit with stones, clubs, metal bars, and even guns. As the women tried to flee through cornfields, they were threatened with rape. One young medical doctor was struck on her legs by machete 13 times. Hundreds of police arrived in time to save us. One police officer told us, "Pray to your God, because these people obey no laws. If God does not hear you, none of us will get out of this alive." Later, 20 of those police officers were converted to Christ.

Still, the Catholic church is showing a spirit of better cooperation with the government and even with evangelical leaders. There is a clearer separation of church and state. And even though not always enforced, these laws are now on the books.

One hidden blessing that came with the many decades of religious restrictions was that the Mexican evangelical church developed its own strong and healthy national leadership. Our leaders are conservative in theology and practice but express a strong social consciousness. While precise data are not available, reasonable estimates are that in 1970 all non-Catholics numbered fewer than 1 million, in 1980 more than 2 million, in 1990 perhaps 7 million. Some sources say that non-Catholics today represent 17 percent of the population. The State Department lists nearly 6,000 religious associations, 75 percent of them Protestant, and of those more than 60 percent are Pentecostals, who formerly represented the poorer segments of society but today include many professionals and middle or upper classes. Charismatic evangelicals have the largest buildings while their ministers tend to be younger. Their worship services and systems of leadership are similar to the Willow Creek Community Church model in the Chicago area. Some are following the model of the Toronto Blessing.

The evangelical church is steadily becoming a visible presence in Mexican society. An interdenominational Christian choir called Amen has sung in important concert halls, often accompanied by symphony orchestras. Most news media have evangelicals on staff. There are three Protestant universities in the country. An interdenominational group is in the process of starting the first evangelical university in Mexico City. Christian camps show a strong presence. And after long years when Christian radio was forbidden, the airwaves today broadcast numerous gospel programs—though Christian stations as such are not yet allowed.

At the political level, almost all the parties have evangelicals among their leaders. In Mexico City, Maria de los Angeles Moreno, of Baptist background, has been a senator, president of the Congress, member of the presidential cabinet, and national president of her political party.

Pablo Salazar Mendicuchea, a member of the Church of the Nazarene, was secretary of state in Chiapas and is now a senator and member of the Commission of Good Will and Pacification, the group attempting to mediate an end to the religious conflict in that important state. Another evangelical Christian is Pablo Monzalvo, a former director of some 20,000 auxiliary police, who teaches in the national university and leads a charismatic congregation. For better or worse, most political parties now seek a better relationship with evangelicals through contacts with their leaders and through organizations such as the Mexican Evangelical Fellowship (CONEMEX), which played an important part in the reformation of the Constitution.

While everything is not rose colored here, Mexico is changing for the better. I am encouraged. We have more liberty for evangelism and the practice of our faith than ever before.

Juan M. Isáis, 72, is directory of Latin American Mission of Mexico and publisher of Prisma, an evangelical Mexican magazine. He has served as a missionary in Mexico, Central America, and New York City and was president of the Mexican Evangelical Fellowship. E-mail: milamex@compuserve.com

November 16, 1998 Vol. 42, No. 13, Page 72

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n e w s

Chiapas waits

Zapatistas sit out election, hoping for defeat of local PRI

By John Ross

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS -- On election morning (July 2), Ana Lidia, a Tzeltal Indian mother of six, walked three hours down a heavily patrolled jungle road to cast a ballot in the village of Patihuitz, a Lacandon rain-forest outpost in which the rebel Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) has deep roots.

"How can we change things if we don't vote?" the 28-year-old Indian mother asked, as she folded her ballot and slipped it into a cardboard box at the local schoolhouse.

Her decision to cast a ballot for Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, the candidate of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), took courage. Cárdenas and the PRD are hated by militants of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

On the other hand, Lidia's Zapatista neighbours think anyone who votes is a PRIista -- despite assurances from the EZLN's charismatic leader, Subcomandante Marcos, that sympathizers would not be sanctioned. The Tzeltal mother knew she would be questioned in her community.

"I pray that God will bless us and the PRI will not win," she says.

But despite her touching faith, the PRI, which had invested a fortune in Chiapas, swept 11 out of 12 federal districts in Mexico's southernmost state. The long-ruling party's presidential candidate, Francisco Labastida, beat rightist Vicente Fox by an ample margin on a day that Fox and the conservative National Action Party (PAN) swept the PRI from power for the first time in seven decades. Cárdenas, Lidia's choice, finished a distant third.

How so? Pablo Salazar, the opposition gubernatorial candidate in upcoming August elections, charges the PRI with diverting 300 million pesos from the Progresa poverty program to buy votes.

In the weeks before the election, long lines of impoverished Indian farmers formed outside banks in Ocosingo to cash their agrarian subsidy checks.

But campesinos in one Zapatista community returned 19,000 pesos in handouts to local authorities, insisting that their votes were not for sale.

In La Realidad, the rebels' most public outpost, Zapatista loyalists were reportedly offered 500 pesos for their votes by PRI operators.

The EZLN has longstanding reservations about participating in elections.

Corrupt elections

They refuse to endorse candidates for public office -- even those calling for military withdrawal from the conflict zone -- believing elections to be corrupt and divisive for indigenous communities.

Some observers say the EZLN is biding its time and waiting for the August gubernatorial race, in which they will back Salazar, the first president of the COCOPA legislative commission that oversaw long-dormant peace talks between the Zapatistas and the Zedillo government. An ex-PRI senator, Salazar left the ruling party after Zedillo refused to honour the Indian rights agreement.

If Salazar, who is backed by both Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and president-elect Fox, beats the PRI machine, his victory will brighten the prospects for renewed peace talks.

In his initial comments on the Chiapas quandary, the new president, Fox, who recently became a supporter of the San Andres accords (17 days before the election, to be exact) has expressed a willingness to meet with the EZLN leadership.

Fox campaign manager Rodolfo Elizondo, current party president Luis Bravo Mena, and Luis H. Alvarez, an emeritus member of the PAN hierarchy and former presidential candidate, helped to negotiate the San Andres accords.

The PAN has submitted its own version of the Indian rights agreement to congress. One of its articles would allow autonomous rule to local authorities.

The EZLN, which holds the COCOPA version of the agreement as sacred, says the proposed PAN legislation would have to be retired before negotiations could begin.

Fox option

That will be a delicate task for the new president. Few bridges now exist to the EZLN leadership.

One option for Fox is international mediation of the conflict.

More difficult still will be getting the army to agree to the pullback the EZLN is demanding before any negotiations resume.

With only peripheral ties to the military, the new president will come up against a wall of hard-nosed generals determined to retain the armed forces' formidable presence in Chiapas.

Military and civilian authority perform a delicate dance of power here.The president's loyalty to the armed forces is at least as important as the armed forces' loyalty to the president.

But the quid pro quo of mutual loyalties was forged under seven decades of PRI presidencies. With a new party in power, the military will have to redefine its influence, making a period of muscle-flexing seem inevitable.

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CIEPAC

Chiapas, México

August 7, 2000

The Federal Elections in Chiapas

The federal elections in Chiapas took place with 48% abstention rate, 22% of the votes for the PRI, 14% for the Alianza por el Cambio, 13% for Alianza por Mexico, 1% for the rest of the parties, and 2% of votes nullified (the latter equaling 44, 426 votes).

In the federal elections of 1994, there was an electoral participation rate of 67% of the population in Chiapas; in 1997, it decreased to 35%; and, in these elections of July 2, 52% of the electoral list voted. Chiapas was 12 points less than the national average in terms of electoral participation and was the state with the highest abstention rate in the country. Neither abstentionism nor fraud have yet to be defeated.

The PRI won 11 of the 12 federal deputy positions in Chiapas, two senatorships and the majority of presidential votes. Although the PRI abstained 43% of the votes cast, this only represents a little more than 22% of the electorate.

The Alianza por el Cambio obtained the federal deputyship in District 09 of Tuxtla Gutiérrez with a high margin in their favor. This was also the district in which they received the most presidential votes.

According to the results obtained in the third federal district in Chiapas, which has its head in Ocosingo and includes the municipalities of Altamirano and Las Margaritas, 48% of the nominal list did not vote. This district is where the highest number of military camps and soldiers are found.

Chiapas ranked 28th amongst the 32 states (including the Federal District) in the country in terms of number of presidential votes received by the PAN. Vicente Fox did not convince the indigenous population, despite his promises to fulfill the San Andrés Accords, prosecute paramilitary groups, and withdraw the Mexican Army in 15 minutes. Fox also stated, on June 27 in Tapachula, that “in the next six years, in all of Chiapas, there will not be a single rural community or popular colony that lacks potable water, electricity, drainage, telephone communication, internet, highway transportation, health centers, or middle and superior education levels” and that he will guarantee that “Chiapas will never return to having a single young person who does not study.”

For both the PRD as for the PRI, Chiapas ranked sixth among all the states in terms of number of votes each party received.

Despite the abstention rate (48%), if we add up all the opposition votes cast in Chiapas in the election on July 2, it amounts to nearly 100 000 votes more than those received by the PRI. This means that the PRI will have to commit a huge fraud to be able to maintain the governorship of the state. In addition, according to the public opinion poll taken between July 12 and 18 by GAUSSC-Grupo de Asesores Unidos in 100 000 Chiapanecan households distributed through 110 electoral sections, 55.4% prefer the candidate Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía of the Alianza por Chiapas (which is an alliance of eight political parties), while 38.3% prefer the PRI. This amounts to a difference of 17 points, making it technically impossible for the PRI to win the elections for the state government on August 20. Moreover, on August 2nd, Alducin y Asociados published its poll, the results of which were 69.5% in favor of Pablo Salazar and 26.6% for the PRI candidate, Sami David.

We can analyze the prospects by municipality. If the opposition that voted in the federal elections of July 2 returns to vote in the state elections according to the same logic, then Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía of the Alianza por Chiapas will win in 52 of the 111 municipalities in the state (46% of the total), including the municipalities with the highest number of voters in the state: Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Tapachula, Palenque, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Villaflores, Pichucalco, Cintalapa, Chilón, Tonalá, Ocozocoautla, Arriaga, Chiapa de Corzo, Reforma, Ixtapa, Suchiapa, Amatenango del Valle, Nicolás Ruiz, Totolapa, Sitalá, Tila, Yajalón, La Libertad, Salto de Agua, Bochil, Huitiupán, Jitotol, Rayón, Tapilula, Chapultenango, Juárez, Francisco León, Ocotepec, Osumacinta, San Fernando, Berriozábal, Jiquipilas, Mapastepec, Pijijiapan, Acapetahua, Huehuetán, Huixtla, Mazatán, Villa Comaltitlán, Chalchihuitan, Villa Corzo, Cacahoatán, Frontera Hidalgo, Metapa, Suchiate, Tuxtla Chico and Unión Juárez.

In 11 municipalities, the PRI had only 10% more votes than the opposition, and, is therefore susceptible to lose these. These are: Comitán, Villa Las Rosas, Tumbalá, Simojovel, Copainalá, Escuitla, Tuzantán, Frontera Comalapa, Motozintla, Tenejapa and La Concordia.

The municipalities in which the PRI had more than 10% of the votes in its favor in comparison to those received by the opposition totaled 48: Acala, Soyaló, Chiapilla, San Lucas, Socoltenango, Venustiano Carranza, Teopisca, La Trinitaria, Tzimol, Altamirano, Ocosingo, Sabanilla, Catazajá, El Bosque, Pantepec, Pueblo Nuevo, Tapalapa, Amatán, Ixhuatán, Ixtacomitán, Ixtapangajoya, Ostuacán, Solosuchiapa, Sunuapa, Coapilla, Chicoasen, Tecpatán, Acacoyagua, Bejucal de Ocampo, Bella Vista, Chicomuselo, La Grandeza, Mazapa, El Porvenir, Siltepec, La Independencia, Las Margaritas, Chanal, Huixtán, Oxchuc, Cancuc, Chamula, Chenalhó, Larráinzar, Mitontic, Pantelhó, Zinacantán and Angel Albino Corzo. In about half of these municipalities there is an EZLN presence.

The state is divided into electoral districts; and, these are divided into sections that can have from 1 to 4 voting stations. In the previous elections, the PRI managed to receive a majority of one vote over the opposition in sections like some in the municipalities of Pijijiapan, Tenejapa and Tuxtla Chico. It won by 2 to 10 votes in Acacoyagua, Acala, Acapetahua, Altamirano, Arriaga, Cintalapa, Chiapilla, Chilón, Chicomuselo, Escuintla, Huehuetán, Mazatán, Las Margaritas, Ocosingo, Pantelhó, Pichucalco, San Fernando, Salto de Agua, Simojovel, Suchiate, Tecpatán, Villa Corzo and Villa Flores. The section in which the PRI won by the highest margin (1 038 votes) was at voting station 723 in Las Margaritas.

The trends can be analyzed from the point of view of the federal election results in terms of the state electoral districts. Of the 24 districts, adding the votes for the Alianza por Chiapas, Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía will win in 14. These are Districts 01, 02, 03, 05, 08, 09, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 23, and 24.

In Chiapas, the presidential defeat of the PRI has provoked the flight of thousands of PRIists from various municipalities and sectors to join Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía. For this reason many municipalities in which the PRI could guarantee its victory with lower or higher margins could be lost on August 20th. The epitaph of the official party is already written.

ELECTORAL FRAUD BEFORE AND ALWAYS

After the federal elections of July 2nd, the state Alianza Cívica concluded that “In Chiapas, this electoral process is not even over and abundant irregularities have been observed which, from the preliminary stages, put in doubt the quality and transparency of the elections. The context in which the process developed has been determined by militarization and police bodies in control of almost all of the regions of the state, paramilitary groups that operate with the protection of the government against dissident communities, pueblos, and displaced communities, expulsions produced by the political religious intransigence, crime and violence to induce fear in the population, partially in the management of information and above all, the generalized, shameless use of public resources to support official candidates. The right to FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT, the right to a FREE VOTE, the right to INFORMATION were restricted for a large majority of Chiapanecan citizens during the months preceding Election day.”

Among the multiple denunciations about electoral frauds and anomalies on the part of the PRI, communities, social organizations and observer groups reported the following:

Verification of voters by lists. Intervening in and watching over voting stations and ballot boxes. Control of the vote of women through the Programa de Educación, Salud y Alimentación (PROGRESA) (Education, Health and Food Program). Verification of ballots before they were deposited in the ballot boxes. Verbal aggression against some observers. Expulsion or intimidation of representatives of political parties at the voting stations. economic promises to functionaries at the voting stations or handing out resources. Recording voting credentials whereby the vote in the state election was set down. Transporting voters. Distribution of sheeting, chickens, dispensations, mills, and other goods in exchange for votes. Rumors along the lines of- if the opposition wins the presidency, then they will eliminate economic support for social programs and to ‘combat poverty.”

Pressure on functionaries and bureaucrats to vote for the PRI. Use of municipal infrastructures and authorities to carry out the campaign and frauds in favor of the official party.

Theft of packets by functionaries of the voting stations and militants from the PRI when their party did not fulfill economic payments that it promised them. Collection and renting of voting credentials. Illegal nullifying of votes for the opposition when the votes were counted. Inclusion of PRI propaganda in bags used for food distribution and other governmental support.

In addition to these and other anomalies, other problems that were observed included: serious deficiencies in the training of functionaries of voting stations and in the broadcasting of the locations of voting stations; deficient handling of voting documentation and voting incidents on the part of functionaries; copious voting at special (mobile) voting stations by soldiers who had an abusive attitude and lacked respect for voting line-ups; and, hundreds of people that were unable to vote in the special voting stations.

A delegation of more than thirty academic observers from Japan, Europe and the United States which visited Mexico from the May 19th to 20th and which was organized by Global Exchange, Alianza Cívica and other organizations, produced a report “The pre-electoral conditions in Mexico, 2000”, in which they concluded that “the systems of investigation and punishment for violations of electoral laws and the means used to document the complaints apparently have significant weaknesses.” According to the observers, some remote areas did not receive adequate information, particularly where indigenous languages were prevalent.

In the specific case of Chiapas, the observers received reports along the lines that some voting stations were located to make them accessible for PRI sympathizers, while sympathizers for the opposition in some cases were forced to travel two or three hours to vote. They also stated that the municipal president of Chenalhó mentioned that he received 3 million pesos for the Programa de Empleo Temporal (Program for Temporary Employment) a little before the elections.

According to the report by the Comisión de Radio Difusión (Radio Broadcasting Commission), the statistics for Chiapas indicate that between January 19th and April 8th, the PRI received 57.2% of all air time, the Alianza por Mexico 19.7%, and the Alianza por el Cambio 10.7%. For the period between March 12th and April 8th, the data is as follows: PRI 75.3%, Alianza por Mexico 9.9%, and Alianza por el Cambio 3.6%.

(The report can be found in its complete form at the web page:

www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/mexico/preeleccion2000/appendices.html)

Finally, the victory of the change in presidential power created a smoke screen over the huge electoral fraud in Chiapas which is now planned and executed with more force. The governors of the PRI from the Southern region have closed ranks to support the candidate of Sami David. At the same time the opposition parties and various sectors are making an urgent call to society to recruit observers, defend the vote and prevent fraud, and, to the PRI to banish the fraudulent practices that have characterized it.

THE PRI STRATEGY

In the past, the PRI candidate Sami David David was attacked in the head with an object when he was campaigning in front of the house where his opponent was born. In the morning, Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía campaigned in the same way in a municipality further on. For this, he benefited from the occurrence a few hours earlier by requesting that his followers in Soyaló not fall into provocations. Nonetheless, PRIists and Alliance supporters confronted each other with blows and insults. There are many versions, and they favor each side. However they happen, these types of actions do not contribute to breaking down political polarization or animosity or to building the tolerance necessary for the electoral process to move forward.

This completely reprehensible aggression has been used by the government and the official party to try to pick up the failing campaign of Sami David, a campaign which strays far from the preferences of the voters. The PRI is the political party that has the least reason and moral authority to accuse its opponent and all the other parties that form the Alianza por Chiapas of wanting violence and siding with intolerance. Also, the official party has until now used the press, radio and television in the state to launch a dirty war. Its fight is neither through a prognosis for the state (whether poverty or no poverty, whether dialogue with the Zapatistas or unilateral measures in the style of Albores Guillén, etc.), nor is it by proposals to take Chiapas out of the political, social or economic backwardness in which it is stagnating.

The PRI campaign has centered around the ‘hunger vote’ by buying votes, particularly those of indigenous women, through handing out dispensations, metal sheets, and promises of credit and money from programs to ‘fight poverty’. In the past, with complete cynicism and nerve before the eyes of society, a vehicle from the city hall in San Cristóbal distributed dispensations to indigenous people in front of the municipal presidency and next to a huge sign with PRI propaganda. In addition, there is also the ‘vote of fear’ which is instigated by the paramilitary groups, the threats and new expulsions in the northern zone by Paz y Justicia, and the threats in Ocosingo, Chenalhó and other municipalities.

Now the PRI distributes handbills accusing Pablo Salazar of being an evangelist and someone who will, upon becoming governor, destroy traditions and the Catholic religion, which will generate violence and religious intolerance. However, it is the PRI militants of Chamula who for years have prohibited evangelical worship and temples, and who, with the support of the government, for years have expelled (and who continue to expel) from their land thousands of evangelicals. It is PRI militants who fill out the ranks of the paramilitaries and the majority of whom do not belong to the Catholic church. The paramilitaries who murdered 45 Catholic women and children in Acteal with the complicity of the government, police and members of the army, and who are now sentenced to jail, were also PRIists.

It has been during the administrations of PRI governments when Cathecists have been murdered, when Catholic religious temples have been burned, closed, and profaned by paramilitaries; when priests from the San Cristóbal de las Casas diocese have been expelled; when its bishops have been accused, defamed, and have been the target of attempted assassinations; and when its priests have been persecuted and incarcerated. The majority of the thousands of displaced people are the result of the actions of sympathizers of the actual government. Thus, the foundations for this campaign are not only absurd, but it is precisely this party and government which have been characterized by the generation of violence, paramilitaries, impunity, displacement, and religious intolerance.

The historical memory of the people no longer permits the PRI and the government to generate consensus and credibility before the majority of society. Consensus, credibility, and legitimacy are three fundamental elements for a government to be democratic and to be able to steer Chiapas toward peace. This peace means not only the absence of bullets, but, all that is required to achieve development for everyone without exclusion, with active and participatory democracy, and with dignified justice for everyone, banishing impunity and corruption.

In this context of the dirty war and the elections that will take place in the state, someone dedicates a lot of time to boycotting information from CIEPAC and other non-governmental organizations. While our bulletins are sent only one time, cyber-pirates send many copies at the same time to saturate and tire readers. We have also had interference during our electronic communications, documents altered and diverted, and other mechanisms that are part of an attempt create a fence around information about the events that we have and will live through in Chiapas. Thanks to all the people who have written us showing their comprehension, solidarity, support and resistance.

The defeat of the PRI in Chiapas will be the last bit of dirt on its tomb. The PRI knows that its loss will strike at the morale of PRIism at a national level (which is already threadbare). The governors of the country will fall one by one. The PRI is already a zombie, this being the only way it can revive itself. Its ghost wanders through society but, for this, is no less dangerous (Zombie, according to the Larousse dictionary, means the serpent god in the voodoo cult, with the capacity to return to life as a skeleton. A corpse resuscitated by a witch doctor to have at his service. A person devoid of will).

To see a map on the federal and state electoral districts in Chiapas, consult www.ciepac.org. In addition, you can consult Bulletin “Chiapas al Día” No. 193, in which we include an analysis of the trends and candidates, at this webpage. On the other hand, the Artistas Independientes, Alianza Cívica, and the Coordinación Pro Elecciones Limpias have a call out to all people who have video cameras to film the electoral process. This notice can be found at the following webpage: www.laneta.apc.org/sclc

Gustavo Castro
Center for Economic and Political Investigations of Community Action, A.C.
CIEPAC, member of the "Convergence of Civil Organizations for Democracy" National
Network (CONVERGENCIA)

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[Chiapas-L] Reuters - Peace Prayers May Be Answered in Mexico's Chiapas

To: chiapas-l@tierra.UCSD.Edu
Subject: [Chiapas-L] Reuters - Peace Prayers May Be Answered in Mexico's Chiapas
From: Cupcaketoo <cupcaketoo@mindspring.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 15:17:27 -0400
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Feature-Peace Prayers May Be Answered in Mexico's Chiapas

ACTEAL, Mexico (Reuters) - Last Tuesday, 32 months to the day after a massacre that killed 45 of their Tzotzil brethren, the Indians of this Mexican highland village came together to pray for peace. Now their prayers might finally be answered.

In an event repeated on the 22nd of every month, devout Catholic villagers spent the day at Mass and in a solemn procession to the tombs of loved ones killed in the Dec. 22, 1997, massacre, the worst bloodshed in Chiapas state since the 1994 Zapatista uprising over Indian rights. A few wept.

But on Tuesday, two days after independent Sen. Pablo Salazar ousted the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) from the Chiapas governor's chair after seven decades in power, Acteal's mourning was laced with hope.

"We want peace, not only here in Chiapas but for all of Mexico," Manuel Perez, a leader of the pacifist community organization, told Reuters. "We voted for Pablo in the hope he has it in his heart to help us. We hope for change."

Salazar's election victory on Sunday, six weeks after Vicente Fox ended the PRI's 71-year hold on the presidency in the July 2 general election, is universally hailed as a breath of life for the stalled peace process in this strife-torn state of nearly 4 million largely poor Indian citizens.

A 45-year-old lawyer specializing in indigenous rights and a former member of the congressional peace commission, Salazar is seen to have the will and experience to help bring the Zapatistas and the government back to the negotiating table.

Nowhere is the call for peace more heartfelt than in Acteal, a community of families displaced by war, caught between two armies and clinging to a hardscrabble life on the mountainside they now call sacred ground.

"The path to peace is marked with the blood of your martyrs," the Rev. Pedro Arriaga told worshipers as he celebrated Mass in Spanish and Tzotzil. "Hatred of faith killed our brothers and sisters from Acteal. To die by hatred of faith is to be martyred."

DIVINE CALL TO VOTE

For Arriaga, God's hand guided Acteal voters to the polling booths on Sunday. "God has brought this indigenous community to express its voice," he said.

Villagers walked hours to polling places in surrounding PRI-controlled towns after a last-minute decision by election officials not to install voting booths in Acteal.

"We were afraid, but we had to make the effort to go because if you don't vote, when are you going to see change," said Perez, 54, who led 20 voters on the 90-minute trek to a polling station.

"They're all PRI supporters there. We were nervous, but so were they. They just looked at us, and we looked at them."

Though they reject a government they say has systematically trampled on Indian rights, Acteal's people disavow the Zapatista rebels' armed struggle and call for peaceful change through civic action.

Shortly before the massacre, they fled their homesteads in the verdant hills into Acteal's center to escape cross-fire between pro-government armed bands and Zapatista supporters. Presumed to be rebel supporters themselves, many saw their homes sacked and burned by anti-Zapatista groups.

Today Zapatista sympathizers occupy the school, keeping their distance from the Acteal refugees, while the army patrols the edge of town. And members of the same band that committed the 1997 slaughter still roam freely.

Last year 44 Indians were sentenced to 35 years in prison for participating in the massacre, an act of vengeance over the death a few days earlier of a PRI supporter in a clash with Zapatistas. The national government says scores of other suspects in the massacre remain at large.

Nearly three years later, Acteal's displaced are among some 15,000 refugees unable to return home for fear of attack -- by former neighbors and even relatives who support the government. This year Acteal villagers harvested corn on their land, helped by human rights workers who accompanied them to the fields.

They are calling on the incoming governments of Salazar and Fox to put the assassins behind bars, to disarm and prosecute other armed civilian groups sowing terror, and to reduce a military presence they and rights workers say tears the social fabric of indigenous communities and foments violence. The massacre survivors also want payment for their losses.

The new governments may heed their call. Fox calls peace in Chiapas a priority and Salazar pledges to work for reduction of military troops and prosecution of armed bands blamed for scores of deaths since the initial bloodshed that claimed some 200 lives among army troops and Zapatista rebels.

"Acteal is a wound, an act of brutality that cannot remain in impunity," Salazar said the day after the state election.

STRUGGLE GOES ON

Perez was among villagers praying for peace in Acteal's makeshift chapel when the shooting began in 1997. He fled to the village school, where he found state police and pleaded with them for help.

"They said to me, 'What are you doing here, you're a Zapatista,"' he recalled. "They said, 'Better we just let them kill each other."'

A retired army general and two senior security police were sentenced this year to eight years in prison for failing to intervene to stop the slaughter, which continued for hours as fleeing villagers were hunted down.

One by one Perez's five children and his wife emerged from hiding in the forest that day. All were unharmed except for 9-year-old Pedro, who was shot in the knee. Fifty other children were orphaned and dozens of people injured, some of them maimed for life. Twenty-one women, 15 children and nine men died.

Last Tuesday, the souls of the dead were symbolized by 45 white candles planted in the dirt floor of the rustic chapel. In a ceremony colored by Mayan Indian customs, mourners knelt and bowed foreheads to the ground for more than half an hour as a village elder prayed aloud and men in traditional tunics played a dirge on primitive drums, a horn and harp.

To survivors such as Diego Perez, the explosion of hatred that killed his father, his brother and several other family members represents the ruling party's legacy.

"The PRI creates division, seeks problems, massacres people," Perez said during the memorial service, speaking on behalf of the community. "The government remains silent, denies us justice, keeps us displaced, protects paramilitary groups and militarizes the region."

Still, even as he and his neighbors celebrated the end of seven decades of single-party rule that oversaw injustice, inequality and repression and eventually spawned a rebellion, they acknowledged that peace was not yet at hand.

"We know that our problems are not over with these elections," Perez said. "We have been displaced by this dirty war, but we will not tire of the struggle for peace, for justice and dignity."

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[Chiapas-L] Mexico Ruling Party Fights for Survival in Chiapas

To: chiapas-l@tierra.UCSD.Edu
Subject: [Chiapas-L] Mexico Ruling Party Fights for Survival in Chiapas
From: Cupcaketoo <cupcaketoo@mindspring.com>
Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2000 20:12:25 -0400
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Feature-Mexico Ruling Party Fights for Survival in Chiapas

ZINACANTAN, Mexico (Reuters) - Tzotzil Indians in this highland village in Chiapas, who have witnessed nature's fury and armed uprising, felt the earth shift beneath them last month as Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) lost its 71-year hold on the presidency.

"My mother wept, we've never lost before," Juana Vasquez, 21, a weaver, told Reuters in the adobe house where she lives with her mother, grandmother, sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews -- 14 in all. "The PRI loses and problems come. The PRI loses and war comes. That's what people are saying."

For residents of this and other fiercely traditional indigenous villages, voting against the PRI has been seen as tantamount to rejecting God and the fatherland.

"PRIismo is a political culture in shock in this country," federal Sen. Pablo Salazar, opposition candidate for Chiapas governor in the Aug. 20 election, told Reuters. "In these communities, supporting the PRI is an act of faith."

As most of the rest of the country voted to oust the ruling party and elect Vicente Fox president on July 2, Zinacantan delivered a majority for PRI presidential candidate Francisco Labastida, Municipal President Andres Sanchez noted proudly.

Town leaders, in traditional dress and conducting community business in the chapel annexed to the church, said residents are not pressured to conform. But, asked what would happen to someone in Zinacantan who openly supported the opposition, Vasquez said: "They'd throw them out. This town is pure PRI."

PRI FIGHTING FOR SURVIVAL

Salazar, an independent senator who broke with the PRI last year, may be writing another chapter in the history books. Opinion polls favor him to defeat PRI Sen. Sami David and become the first non-PRI governor ever in Mexico's poorest state, where leftist Zapatista rebels declared war against the government over indigenous rights in 1994.

Backed by an alliance of eight opposition parties spanning the political spectrum, Salazar is received with wild cheers as he meets voters across this dirt-poor, largely indigenous state of nearly 4 million people.

He is fond of telling supporters in this ruling party bastion that the PRI is dead.

"The PRI is a political corpse, this is the death of a political culture," he shouted to cheering rural residents in the sweltering central plaza of Acapetahua, the birthplace of his opponent David near the Guatemalan border.

Later that day, David reassured PRI faithful in Tapachula that the party, although gasping from its national defeat, was alive and kicking in Chiapas, where 11 of 12 districts went to Labastida on July 2.

"I remain loyal to the party," David told Tapachula voters, though he sounded at times more like an opposition candidate as he denounced the government's centralist practices and previous neglect of Chiapas.

David is outside the inner circle of PRI hard-liners and, in his pledge to help bring the party back to its populist origins and his calls for tolerance, inclusiveness and dialogue among all parties and interest groups, he may be seeking to harness the groundswell for change that apparently passed Labastida by.

POLITICAL LANDSCAPE SHIFTS

Though it remains the bedrock of PRI support, the political landscape in Chiapas has shifted.

Salazar's lead of at least 16 percentage points in recent opinion polls would once have been unimaginable. And the July 2 election showed the opposition gaining a toehold even in hardcore PRI communities such as Zinacantan.

Disappointment with the PRI is evident in David's hometown of Acapetahua, where the candidate is seen as a stranger. "I've lived here 38 years and I've never seen him on a soccer field, at a dance," said Filadelfo Morales, who owns a small store.

The local PRI government was elected as assistance and promises of assistance poured in following serious flooding in 1998, Morales said. People credited the PRI federal government for coming to their aid.

"The benefits were linked to the ruling party candidate, he was going to help," Morales said. "But the reality is that people don't feel the promises were kept."

Still, in Zinacantan and other traditional villages, local bosses known as caciques wield political, economic and religious might. They have been rewarded for delivering votes at election time through public resources funneled to their communities by past PRI governments, government critics say.

Many poor and rural voters associate the PRI with government aid, credit and employment programs. Salazar charges that such programs are used unfairly to influence votes.

In Acacoyagua near the Guatemalan border, some residents traveled for two hours to the municipal center recently to collect cash grants distributed by Progresa, which provides subsidies to rural families.

Many recipients were PRI supporters, though they said they understood the program was run by the government and not a political party. Still, they were worried about what the future might hold under the incoming national government.

"They say things are going to change but we don't know how," said Arnulfo Castillo, 40, a farmer and single father of two who receives 800 pesos (about $80) every two months under Progresa.

Vasquez, the weaver, thanks the PRI for bringing potable water and electricity, paved roads and credit for small businesses like her family's crafts shop to Zinacantan. Now she wonders whether those programs will disappear.

"The PRI has supported us," she said. "Now I don't know whether we'll get that help, because the PRI lost."

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News & Analysis

MEXICO SOLIDARITY NETWORK WEEKLY NEWS SUMMARY

AUGUST 8-14, 2000

Contents:

Chiapas campaigns end amidst violence, mudslinging, and accusations of fraud
1. CHIAPAS CAMPAIGNS DRAW TO A CLOSE

With the August 20 gubernatorial election in Chiapas just days away, rival candidates Sami David David (PRI) and Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía (Alliance for Chiapas) brought their respective campaigns to a close with a good dose of mudslinging, negative campaigning, and mutual accusations of violence.

Salazar – who is backed by a coalition of eight parties, including the PAN and the PRD – maintains a lead in all important polls, with an advantage ranging from ten to forty percent over David, who nevertheless claims to be ahead based on polls conducted by local newspapers with an editorial line close to the state government.

Salazar concluded his campaign in the company of PRD national president Amalia García, Zacatecas governor Ricardo Monreal, and Mexico City mayor Rosario Robles. David, meanwhile, was accompanied by PRI president Dulce María Sauri, Chiapas interim governor Roberto Albores Guillén, and the governors of Mexico State, Yucatán, Veracruz, Puebla, and Hidalgo.

The two candidates share a similar past in the PRI, and in the most recent legislature both were Senators for the then-ruling party. Salazar left the PRI in May 1999 and immediately began an independent campaign for the governorship, soliciting (and eventually receiving) the support of every opposition party except for the insignificant Social Democracy Party (PDS).

The “dirty war” between Salazar and David continues to revolve primarily around issues which have absolutely nothing to do with any of the important issues affecting Chiapas and Mexico: specifically, whether or not Salazar faked his law school credentials (as alleged by David), and whether or not David is homosexual (as alleged by Salazar).

With regards to violence, David accuses Salazar of being behind the physical attack on his person during a rally in Soyaló on August 4, when he was struck in the head by flying objects which his supporters claim were rocks, and Salazar claims was nothing more than a bunch of roses. Salazar, meanwhile, accuses David of having links to drug traffickers and paramilitary groups. Each accuses the other of being the “candidate of violence.”

Salazar claims that the interim government of Roberto Albores Guillén and the “governor’s syndicate” – made up of the PRI governors of Mexico’s southeastern states – are preparing either fraud or an attempt at destabilization which would result in subsequent annulment of the elections. The fraud charge is probably the easiest to prove: journalists’ reports from Chiapas in recent weeks are rife with matter-of-fact accounts of vote buying on a massive scale, the use of federal PROGRESA and PROCAMPO funds to influence voter preferences, and even the criminal imprisonment of fourteen people in Las Margaritas who stood against a “community mandate” to support Sami David David.

Concerns about “destabilization” attempts were heightened by a series of events in the past two weeks which have been underlined by international observers and non-governmental organizations: the paramilitary attack on pro-Zapatistas of Predio Paraíso in the community of Tierra y Libertad, Yajalón, on August 3; the aggression against Sami David David in Soyaló on August 4; and ongoing land disputes between Zapatistas and PRI militants in Ocosingo which have repeatedly erupted in violence in recent days.

The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), meanwhile, has still not made a public declaration laying out a position with respect to Sunday’s elections, although the rebels are not expected to boycott.

SOURCES: La Jornada, Proceso, El Universal, Milenio.

This report is a product of the Mexico Solidarity Network.

Redistribution is authorized and encouraged provided that the source is cited.

Comments: msn@mexicosolidarity.org

http://www.mexicosolidarity.org/news/summary000814.html

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New Hope For Easing Religious Persecution in Mexico

Chiapas, Mexico .... [Bettina Krause/Nancy Rivera]

-------------------------------------------------------

In a Mexican town torn by decades of religious strife, Seventh-day Adventists held a Saturday worship service on August 19 for the first time in more than two months. The service took place outdoors, next to the ruins of one of 14 homes destroyed in March this year when the village's religious majority expelled the group, along with more than 60 other Protestant families.

The Adventists, from the village of Plan de Ayala in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, are among an estimated 30,000 Protestants in the region who have been driven from their homes over the years because of religious differences and for refusing to participate in community religious festivals.

"I don't have a house, but I trust in God," said Adventist Church member Juan Vasquez Alvarez, according to Associated Press reports.

Tensions between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Plan de Ayala have eased as a result of a recent agreement brokered by state officials allowing Protestants to perform community service in exchange for exemptions from local religious festivals. This agreement has been written into the town's land rights law and is the first of its kind at this level, says Hortensio Vasquez, an Adventist Church leader in the region.

"Everything was calm and orderly as the Adventists returned to the village," says Vasquez, who adds that the municipality and state has promised to rebuild the houses destroyed in the conflict earlier this year.

The agreement that paved the way for the Protestants to return to Plan de Ayala includes a provision for all town meetings to be held on a day other than Saturday-the Adventist's day of worship. The agreement also exempts religious duties-such as participation in Roman Catholic festivals-from mandatory community service.

"We now have religious freedom," says Vasquez. He reports that the agreement was the result of a meeting attended by religious leaders and state and local officials, where all participants "accepted the fact that everyone in the town can worship according to whatever religion they choose."

Chiapas has a 30-year history of violence between Roman Catholics and Protestants which has left hundreds dead and thousands displaced from their villages. On August 20, Chiapas residents elected Pablo Salazar as their new governor-the first non-Roman Catholic governor in the state's history-and he has promised renewed efforts to promote peace between religious groups in the area.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another first in Mexico:

Religion an election issue

By John Rice, Associated Press, 8/19/2000 16:28

PLAN DE AYALA, Mexico (AP) The sweet sound of hymns sung in Tojolabal rises from a congregation kneeling beneath banana trees beside the bare pillars of a ruined house.

For the first time in more than two months, the Seventh Day Adventists of this Indian town celebrated Saturday's services near the remains of their homes, which were destroyed in March when hundreds of men armed with torches and machetes terrorized the village and sent Protestants fleeing.

In the past three decades, more than 30,000 people most of them evangelical Protestants have been forced from their villages in Chiapas state for challenging Indian religious orthodoxy and refusing to participate in the alcohol-laden festivals that mix standard Catholicism and Indian religions. Sought in the March attacks that destroyed many of the homes are a farm cooperative president and municipal representative.

''I don't have a house, but I trust in God,'' said Juan Vasquez Alvarez, one of the Adventists.

Saturday's church services came after officials mediated an agreement in which Protestants agreed to perform community tasks in place of participation in the festivals.

Many think Sunday's gubernatorial election could help solve what may be the hemisphere's most dramatic crisis of religious rights.

The candidate leading in the polls, Pablo Salazar, is a Protestant Sunday school teacher and a Church of the Nazarene member referred to as ''Brother Pablo'' in some religious publications.

Never before, Salazar says, has a practicing Protestant been elected governor in Mexico, where even devout members of the dominant Catholic Church have been viewed with suspicion by a militantly secular political establishment.

New President-elect Vicente Fox made front-page news recently merely by attending a Mass and participating in Communion.

A few see Salazar's candidacy literally as providential.

''He comes chosen by God,'' insisted Mariano Gomez Gomez, who attended a Salazar rally in a neighborhood of San Cristobal de las Casas inhabited by thousands of Protestants expelled from the Tzotzil town of Chamula.

The agreement that allowed for Saturday's services was written into the town's land rights law.

''It is the first agreement (of that type) on the national level,'' said Hortensio Vasquez, regional legal adviser for the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

But the precedent follows decades of official reluctance to move against Indian leaders who have produced unanimous town votes for the PRI.

''The church had to exist for many years as if the PRI were directed by God,'' said Antonio Alfaro, a Presbyterian minister in Las Margaritas who was aiding the refugees from Plan de Ayala, 12 miles north.

He said PRI officials preached religious liberty, ''but there are thousands of expellees. That is not liberty.'' He said he is supporting Salazar, after determining that ''he is a Christian.''

Salazar has tried to maintain good relations with Catholics and religion has not been an overt issue in the campaign.

In a recent news conference, he said he would apply the law to halt expulsions and would use education as a long-term solution.

A few blocks from Saturday's service, Carlampo Hernandez scraped peeling paint from the white Catholic church one of the shared-labor tasks required of all men in town.

''It's quiet now,'' he said, insisting he was not bothered by the agreement with the Protestants.

But just to make sure, two dozen state policemen were camped at the entrance of the town taking down the names of passers-by.

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

CIEPAC

Chiapas, México

August 30, 2000

The Challenges in Transition in Chiapas

Like an unedited event, the electoral process in Chiapas lived the past August 20th. The questions that we have at the national level arising from the change in presidential politics, we have at the state level too: What will be the changes that a government other than the PRI will offer? Will the previous candidate and now new governor vary his discourse and actions? Will he fulfill his campaign promises? What effects will there be in the PRI, other parties and sectors of society in Chiapas? What conditions will the new government require to govern? How will the new government team be formed and what repercussions will this have? To what extent will the new state government influence issues of a federal nature? These are but a few amongst many questions.

Among the characteristics and contexts that make this electoral process an important event for the state and the country are the following:

1) In spite of electoral fraud, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) lost the State governorship after decades of maintaining power.

2) For the first time the PRI contended with an Alianza Opositora (Opposition Alliance) made up of 8 parties.

3) For more than 170 years, Chiapas had counted on an average of one governor a year which reflected, amongst other things, a lack of democracy, the imposition of governments, and the absence of government projects over the long term. Since the surge in armed conflict in 1994 with the Zapatista uprising, there have been 7 governors in the state: Patrocinio Gonzalez Garrido, Elmar Setzer, Javier Lopez Moreno, Eduardo Robledo Rincon, Julio Cesar Ruiz Ferro, Roberto Albores Guillen and Amado Avendano as Governor in Rebellion. Now, with the triumph of Pablo Salazar Mendiguchia, the hope is that he will be able to govern for 6 years.

4) Chiapas is the poorest and most marginalized state in the country, with the highest rates of poverty, military presence, number of paramilitary groups, displaced populations, violence, deaths, and impunity.

5) In Chiapas, the EZLN waits for the fulfillment of the San Andres Accords and the conditions necessary for the re-establishment of the unfinished dialogue.

6) Finally, there is a legitimate government.

Pablo Salazar agrees to gover the state in such a way that his administration will achieve a legitimacy that no governor in the previous decades has had. Nonetheless, there are two additional indispensable elements of a good government: achieving credibility among the diverse sectors of the state by fulfilling campaign promises, and, carrying out political and economic projects through hegemony, or, governing by consensus.

New proposals of a constitutional character that relate to Legislative power of the Local Congress, could be blocked by the majority of deputies of the PRI that remain until the next elections in 2001. Among these elements, we point out:

1) The counterinsurgent Remunicipalization process imposed by interim governor Roberto Albores, who is attempting to create more than 30 municipalities, the majority of which are enclaves in the regions where the Zapatistas are carrying out a process of creating autonomous municipalities. The process has been carried out without consensus, in a unilateral and ineffective way, as well as under illegal procedures.

2) The Law of Indigenous Rights and Culture in Chiapas already approved by the Local Congress without intervening the fulfillment of the San Andres Accords on the matter at the federal level.

3) The proposal for annual incomes of the State that involves the definition about the fiscal reform and the public debt with the bank and the federation, among other elements. In the same way, the proposal of annual expenses upon which depend the agreements made with various productive sectors of the state , the possible supports and subsidies, the distribution of resources for political bodies, education, health, etc.

The defeat of the PRI at the national and state level will mean a necessary internal breakdown with competition for control and leadership, disqualifications and violent conflicts. These outbreaks of violence have already been observed in various points in the Norte (North), Altos (Highlands), and Selva (Jungle) zones.

This defeat is provoking many fissures and opportunism by militants who now join different parties. As is seen at the national level, the PRI in the state are found confused and tend to appear like zombis, that is the unique way that it can resuscitate itself if it does not change from the roots, and whose ghost can wander in society but not for it will be less dangerous (zombi, according to the Larousse dictionary, means the ‘serpent god in the voodoo cult, with the capacity to return to live as a skeleton. A dead being resuscitated by a witchdoctor to have at his service”).

The arrival of the new government will mean a change of many actors in Chiapas. The media, previously controlled by the PRI from the state government, will be able to experience important changers. The same applies for the farming, worker, magisterial, and bureaucratic sectors which have traditionally manipulated and corporatized by the state apparatus. Society also hopes that the impunity and corruption that has characterized the government will noticeably diminish; the same with the political and electoral use of public resources meant for the fight against poverty.

Farmer and indigenous organizations will be hoping for a new relationship with the government, including an end to violent expulsions from their land with the use of public forces and the diminishment of political-military operations in indigenous regions.

Governability and the state of the law should be based on respect of human rights manifested in the Political Constitution, reviving the right to freedom of movement that the military, police, and paramilitaries have impeded through checkpoints and harrassment; the right to free religious expression all the time that the paramilitaries have burnt, profaned or closed Catholic temples; the right to housing, health, education when thousands of displaced indigenous people in the state in conditions of extreme poverty, among others.

The promises of Pablo Salazar along the lines of including new democratic institutional forms, like plebiscites and referendums, will allow for the strengthening of the participation of sectors of society in the new government. However, another large challenge for the new governor will be the determination of his new government team since, as was seen during his campaign, the Alianza Opositora did not include the distribution of positions in the structure of the state for the political parties, that which does not mean that these will demand their quota of power by carrying it to governance.

The invitation of Pablo Salazar for civil society, including members of civil organizations, to join his government team, must be well thought-out. The administration of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas in Mexico City included members of these organizations and for many, the experience was not positive, and, the majority returned from where they came. The reason for this is that it is different from being part of civil society organized against the government and obligated to comply with unjust laws that the PRI created in its last decades in the areas of the prosecution of justice, economy and society.

Nonetheless, the political changes do not guarantee economic development, especially for the poorest sectors of Chiapas. The state is not seperated from federal politics and structures, thus, all is not in the hands of Pablo Salazar. For example:

1) The fulfillment of the San Andres Accords signed between the EZLN and the federal government, along with generating conditions of confidence and credibility for re-initiating the dialogue for peace.

2) Militarization and the withdrawal of federal troops from the Mexican army, all the time that although a government sovereign over the federation, the army depends on the Supreme Commander: the president of the Republic.

3) Proposals for a solution to the current crisis in farm products, like coffee and corn, amongst other products and sectors, while the freeing-up of prices, the end of subsidies and the commercial liberalization are determined by the federal Congress of the Union.

4) The Zapatista prisoners kept in various prisons in the state and the application of justice to paramilitary groups come within federal jurisdiction, and are not crimes within community jurisdiction.

One of the largest dangers is that the new federal and state governments, as well as various sectors of civil society, will recreate the same discourse as in the past regarding the situation of armed conflict. Already the drums that sing the victory of democracy before the mera presidential and state political alteration, and that as a consequence demands the EZLN disarm and negotiate, as if the causes that provoked the armed uprising have automatically disappeared. The political prisoners remain incarcerated, the paramilitaries still enjoy impunity, the military continues to grow and harrass, the displaced continue to survive, hunger and misery continue to destroy.

In this transition period, the political changes oblige political parties, social organizations of all kinds, as well as all of society, to redefine their position and their diagnosis of the situation in the country. Similarly, when the EZLN returns to public communication, it will obligate everyone to replan, strengthen or vary the diagnosis.

POWERS AND OBLIGATIONS OF THE GOVERNOR

Article 42 of the Political Constitution of the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas reads as follows:

I. Promulgate and execute the laws and decrees that the State Congress issues, providing in the administrative sphere to its faithful observation; execute the administrative acts that the State executive entrusts the federal laws;

II. Maintain political relations with the Federal Government and with the organs of the Government of the other States of the Federation;

III. Seek the protection of the Forces of the Union in case of revolt or internal disorder;

IV. Ensure that the public funds in every way are well-secured and its collection and distribution are done according to the law;

V. Grant to particulares, through concessions for the exploitation of goods of the property of the State, or the benefits of public services when with the agreement (in accordance with) of the applicable legislation;

VI. Promote by all means possible popular education and procure social advancement and improvement and provide, execute, and agree to fulfil all types of moral and material improvements to the benefit of or interest of the collective.

Public works will be carried out by the Executive Power, itself or by awarding by competition, through notice, within the boundaries of the applicable law;

VII. Preside over the State Indigenous Council;

VIII. Watch over the conservation of order, tranquilty and the security of the State;

IX. Exercise command over the public force of the State and municipalities where it habitually resides or transitorially.

X. Iniciate laws of amnesty or liberty with suspended sentences;

XI. Declare cases in whichthe expropriation of individual goods and rights will proceed for public utility in the form that the law establishes;

XII. Authorize, issue, and cancel patents for the desempeno de la funcion notarial en los terminos de la legislacion respective (within the boundaries of the applicable law);

XIII. Decree in agreement with the applicable legislation the means necessary for ordering the human asentamientos and establish provisions, uses, reserves, destinations/destinies of land, water, and forests, to the effect of executing public works and planning and regulating the foundation, conservation, improvement, and growth of population centers;

XIV. Issue professional titles according to the law;

XV. Initiate before Congress laws and decrees deemed suitable for the improvement of Public Administration;

XVI. Solicit the Permanent Commission to call Congress to extraordinary sessions;

XVII. Present to Congress in the month of November of every year a report duly documenting the state of (guardar-keeping) the various branches of the Public Adminstration;

XVIII. Present to Congress every year, on the third of the opening of the second ordinary period of sessions, the Public Account corresponding to the previous year;

XIX. Present to Congress, in the first ordinary period of sessions, the budget of expenses for the program of the following year;

XX. Facilitate the Judicial Power the help necessary for the expeditious exercise of their functions;

XXI. Submit for the consideration of Congress, or of the Permanent Commission, the appointments for magistrates;

XXII. Name and freely remove employees and functionaries of the public Administration of the State of Chiapas, respecting in every case the attendant rights inconformity with the applicable legislation;

XXIII. Turn over to the Prosecutor of Justice matters that should be discussed in the courts, in order to exercise before them the legal attributes, without diminishing the powers of the Public Minister;

XXIV. Agree that the Secretary of the Government or the secretaries of the office to the sessions of congress to give to this reports that it requests and to support in debates initiative that it presents or the observations that the Executive makes to the projects of law or decrees;

XXV. Order the dismissal for bad conduct of judicial functionaries to which the second paragraph of Article 71 refers;

XXVI. Create trusts in which the citizenship participates as coadyuvante of the Pubilc Adminstration in activities of social interest, dendowing them with the necessary resources for the best achievement of their ends, as well as watch over the correct application of the said resources by supervision and audits;

XXVII. The other that this Constitution expressly confers.

Gustavo Castro Soto
Center for Economic and Political Investigations of Community Action, A.C.
CIEPAC, member of the "Convergence of Civil Organizations for Democracy" National
Network (CONVERGENCIA)

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Chiapas: Hope For Easing Religious Persecution

From APD_Info_Schweiz@compuserve.com

Date 02 Sep 2000 01:28:41

August 30, 2000

Adventist Press Service (APD)

Christian B. Schaeffler, Editor-in-chief

CH-4003 Basel, Switzerland

Fax +41-61-261 61 18

APD@stanet.ch

http://www.stanet.ch/APD

New Hope For Easing Religious Persecution in Mexico

Chiapas, Mexico. In a Mexican town torn by decades of religious strife, Seventh-day Adventists held a Saturday worship service on August 19 for the first time in more than two months. The service took place outdoors, next to the ruins of one of 14 homes destroyed in March this year when the village's religious majority expelled the group, along with more than 60 other Protestant families.

"I don't have a house, but I trust in God," said Adventist Church member Juan Vasquez Alvarez, according to Associated Press reports.

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New Governor of Chiapas will Work to Bring Peace to Mexican Province

New Governor Saved the Life of a Chiapas Indian Pastor

By Dan Wooding

CHIAPAS, MEXICO (December 8, 2000) - Pablo Salazar, the man who once saved the life of an Indian pastor who was sentenced to be hung by an angry lynch, has been elected as governor of Chiapas and, along with new Mexican leader Vicente Fox, will try to bring peace to this troubled province.

Dr. Dale Kietzman, founder and president of Latin American Indian Ministries (L.A.I.M.), who began his ministry in Chiapas with Wycliffe Bible Translators many years ago, said in an interview, "Pablo Salazar has a well deserved reputation with the Indians of Chiapas. They trust him, and this will be very important as he now has the possibility of bringing some order out of the chaos of that situation.

"Pablo is a dedicated believer, an active participant in the Nazarene church in Tuxtla Gutierrez. Many of his friends were confused when he joined the PAN, because it has close ties to the Catholic Church. But Pablo had already resigned from the PRI (he was the senator from Chiapas under the PRI at the time) and many political groups came to him, asking him to run for governor, including the PAN. He decided he would represent all of these groups, and the coalition was headed by the PAN simply because it was the largest opposition party."

Dr. Kietzman, who is also a founding board member of ASSIST Ministries, added, "Pablo is almost a politician by accident. As an attorney, he had helped straighten out the affairs of an athletic club in Tuxtla. That brought him to public attention and he was asked to take on other tasks, in and out of government, usually for short periods of trouble or change. So he knows how to tackle difficult situations."

THE PASTOR WHO WAS SAVED

The pastor whose life he saved, Manuel Arias, a Tzotzil Indian, had been arrested by a lynch mob of supporters of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, known by the Spanish acronym EZLN, who have for more than six years been conducting an armed struggle against the Mexican government. His detention took place shortly after the massacre of 45 Indians on December 22, 1997 in the town of Acteal in the Chenalho area of Chiapas.

His life was spared only after the intervention of then Chiapas senator, Pablo Salazar, the first evangelical ever to be voted into the Mexican Congress since the revolution took place against Spain more than 172 years ago.

I first met Pablo Salazar during an emotional reunion that took place at a special "unity" conference organized and held in the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of the southern Mexico state, by Latin American Indian Ministries of Orange, California.

"I SAW THE ROPES BEING PREPARED"

Salazar then took up the story, "When I heard what was happening to Manuel, I told the Zapatistas and other groups there, 'I know Manuel. He is a pastor, a man of peace. He is a good man, a preacher of the Word.' I also said that I knew that he has never taken a weapon and he has never trained or helped anyone to be involved in conflict. I then demanded they liberate Manuel because he was unfairly detained.

"I told the Zapatistas, 'Unless you liberate Manuel, I will denounce what is going on here in a national way through the media.' I believe that it was not because I was a senator, that I should help him, but because I knew Manuel, and because I am a believer in Jesus Christ. Thank God, they did free him and he was not hung."

Then, turning to the then senator, he added, "I have known him for years and I know he has been chosen by God for the position of senator so he can represent God and the church here in Chiapas and also so he can help the Indian people."

Pablo Salazar was later to address the conference and standing at his side as his Indian interpreter was none other than the pastor whose life he has helped to save!

CAN BRING ORDER OUT OF CHAOS IN CHIAPAS

Dr. Kietzman said, "We feel our role with L.A.I.M. in this situation in Chiapas is to offer support to believers who are fearing for their lives in this region torn by political and religious strife.

"On the one hand you have the long-running military conflict between the Zapatista revolution and the government. Add to that the struggle between the growing evangelical Christian populace, which some say is now as high as 40 percent, and the traditionalists or Christo-pagan Catholics who mix their old pagan practices with the Roman Catholic faith. They have run evangelical Christians off their farmlands and from their tribal communities, burning houses and killing men, women and children because of their refusal to continue in a pagan lifestyle. This has been going on for 32 years, unchecked by the authorities.

"Then, of course, there is the fact that Chiapas is the poorest state in Mexico. When you mix all this together you truly see a hurting people. This grieves the heart of God."

The Zapatistas launched an uprising in January 1994 that claimed at least 145 lives during two weeks of fighting. Their subsequent peace talks with the government broke down in September 1996 and have been followed by a tense cease-fire.

POSSIBLE BREAKTHROUGH

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that, in a possible breakthrough in one of Mexico's most intractable political problems, the leader of the 1994 Zapatista rebellion has agreed to resume peace talks stalled for four years -- but only if the government of new President Vicente Fox makes concessions first.

Subcommander Marcos, leader of the mostly Maya rebels in Chiapas, demanded that the government evacuate seven army bases in the southern state, pass an Indian rights bill and release all Zapatista "political prisoners" as a sign of goodwill.

"Mr. Fox, if you choose the way of respectful, serious and sincere dialogue, show your willingness with deeds," Marcos, wearing his trademark black ski mask, said during his first public appearance in more than a year.

"You can be sure you will have a positive response from the Zapatistas. And this way you can resume the dialogue and soon begin to build a true peace," the rebel leader told about 250 journalists summoned to a jungle clearing north of the Guatemalan border for a late-afternoon news conference.

Marcos' appearance was the most dramatic sign so far of the changes that could occur after Fox's Friday inauguration, which ended the reign of the world's longest-ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

With the help of Pablo Salazar, Vicente Fox has the best hope for peace for many years in Chiapas. He deserves and needs our prayers, as he becomes a peacemaker in his troubled province.

__________________________________________________________________

ASSIST COMMUNICATIONS
PO Box 2126
Garden Grove, CA 92842-2126

Contact: Dan Wooding at (714) 638 1641

Dan Wooding is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma. www.assist-ministries.com.

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New governor of Chiapas promises peace

By Mark Stevenson

Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico, Dec. 8— Calling Zapatista rebels “freedom fighters,” and calling his own predecessors “tyrants,” the first opposition candidate to become governor of Chiapas was inaugurated Friday, promising to bring great change to the troubled state.

Pablo Salazar said his first move as governor would be to release all “prisoners of conscience in the state, including Zapatista prisoners.”

His remarks echoed sentiments expressed by President Vicente Fox, who attended the inauguration. In his first act as president, Fox submitted an Indian rights bill to Congress and began a troop pullback in Chiapas.

“What we are saying is give peace a chance,” Fox said, paraphrasing a famous John Lennon lyric on the 20th anniversary of the singer’s death. “Give justice a chance. Give our Indians and their children a chance.”

In response to Fox’s action over the past week, the rebels have said they would return to peace negotiations, which had stalled under the previous administration. But they remain distrustful of the pro-business president, leaving peace prospects uncertain.

Salazar praised the rebels in his inaugural speech for having noble goals.

“The ones who went to war were those who wanted authentic democracy, true peace and freedom without limits,” Salazar said.

The Chiapas conflict began in 1994, when the rebels staged an armed uprising in the name of indigenous rights and in direct response to the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Since then, the administration of ex-president Ernesto Zedillo had waged a secretive campaign of “low intensity warfare” against indigenous sympathizers. By manipulating an opposition of covertly-financed paramilitary groups to simulate a “civil war,” the federal government’s machinations have resulted in the forced displacement, imprisonment, and death of many of the country’s poorest citizens.

This summer, both Fox and Salazar defeated members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which had held Mexico’s presidency and the Chiapas governorship for more than 70 years. Salazar blamed the violence in Chiapas on the previous government.

“Those who went to war were forced to do it. They were forced to do it by hunger, authoritarianism and desperation,” he said.

Under previous governments in Chiapas, he said, foreigners accused of having rebel sympathies were frequently deported and free speech was crushed.

Salazar also said the past government had given arms to paramilitary groups, who often drove Indians from their communities, and sometimes massacred them.

His remarks were vastly different from those of past governments, which had called the rebels subversive and tried to combat them. But Salazar also warned against a backlash.

“Almost all of the deaths so far have been on one side,” he said, referring to rebel sympathizers killed by paramilitary groups. “We don’t want to reverse that... We don’t want any more deaths at all.”

Salazar seconded Fox’s pledge to do everything possible to achieve peace, promising that “the government will never again be used as an instrument against the people.”

Source: Associated Press

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Salvadorans bury loved ones killed in El Mozote massacre

Relatives carry coffins containing remains of the victims of the Mozote massacre, in El Mozote, 124 miles northeast of San Salvador, El Savador, on Dec. 10.

El Mozote, El Salvador, Dec.10, 2000 — The coffins circled the small plaza of this mountain town in Sunday’s pre-dawn hours as villagers followed, singing church hymns broken up by the tears that waited nearly two decades to fall.

Nineteen years after one of the worst massacres in El Salvador’s civil war, villagers buried 37 of their loved ones in a humble ceremony -- and said their final goodbye.

“Today you will rest in peace, in the peace of our God,” said Gregorio Hernandez, his voice quivering as coffins containing childrens’ remains were buried next to a monument for the victims.

The remains buried Sunday are among 200 recovered so far in the municipality of Meanguera, where local residents and human rights groups believe more than 1,000 villagers were gunned down by US-trained Salvadoran soldiers in December 1981 in what has come to be known as the Mozote massacre.

The peasants were believed to be sympathizers of the rebel army, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.

Argentine experts started digging up the graves in 1992, but stopped for seven years after funds ran out. They resumed their work in April at the request of family members, who wanted to give their loved ones a Christian burial. Church officials are searching for funds to continue the digging in the future.

During a midnight mass on Saturday, more than 500 poor farmers and their families prayed in front of the two dozen coffins placed on a platform outside the small church in this town, 125 miles northeast of San Salvador. Twenty-two of the dead were children, some of whom shared the same coffin.

While the findings have brought peace to their families, it is unlikely they will help in prosecuting those who carried out the killings. An amnesty law approved in 1992, two months after peace accords were signed, prevents the prosecution of soldiers, guerrillas and civilians for any atrocities committed from 1980 to 1990.

“The villagers of El Mozote had the misfortune to find themselves in the path of the Salvadoran Army’s anti-communist crusade,” Mark Danner wrote in his 1994 book “The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War.”

More than 75,000 Salvadorans died during the 12-year civil war between guerrillas and hard-line state forces.

Rufina Amaya lost 21 family members, among them her husband, Domingo, and her four daughters, ranging in age from eight months to 9 years. Sunday’s services brought the memories rushing back.

“They took us from our houses in the afternoon to kill us, but that night I managed to hide myself in the bushes,” said the 60-year-old woman, as tears welled up in her eyes. “My God saved me, but my family did not have such luck ... I will never forget them.”

Source: Associated Press

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Chiapas: Update Nov 30 - Dec 24

From: Christian Peacemaker Teams, Chicago, IL (cpt@igc.org)

Date: Tue Dec 26 2000

CPTNet Chiapas: Update Nov 30 - Dec 24

CPTers continue spending time in various camps of displaced Abejas in Chenalho county. On the road into the X'oyep displaced camp, soldiers question Scott Kerr and ask for his passport.

Friday December 1

Vicente Fox, the first non-PRI president of Mexico in 80 years, takes office. CPTers William Payne and Carl Meyer participate in continuing night watches in the displaced camp of Nuevo Yibeljoj.

Saturday December 2

President Fox orders most of the military checkpoints in Chiapas removed, and closes one base in the jungle region. In Chenalho county the military continues to be a visible presence, but the checkpoints in Chenalho and Las Limas are gone. The removal of the checkpoints is a major change for CPTers and others who in the past have often been harassed or threatened with deportation by immigration officials at the checkpoints.

Sunday December 3

The CPT Mexico team attends worship at the Catholic church in Polho, a large camp of several thousand displaced Zapatista sympathizers in Chenalho county. Afterwards they discuss the paramilitary situation with a representative of the community, who says the paramilitaries are afraid that the new government will no longer support them. "They're saying, 'If the government is going to come arrest us anyway, we might as well do one more job like Acteal before they come get us.'"

Tuesday December 5

Meyer and CPTer Erin Kindy walk from Acteal to Nuevo Yibeljoj with a leader of the Abeja organization. Walking through the military base and PRIista community of Majomut, the CPTers notice that he is very intentional about greeting everyone he sees, including soldiers. They ask him about this, and he says, "Yes, of course I greet everyone. That's what it means to be part of civil society. They're my brothers and sisters, too I don't have any enemies."

The PRI municipal president of Chenalho sends an open letter to President Fox requesting that the checkpoints in Chenalho be reinstated, to help "control foreigners who are coming in to misdirect the people of Acteal and Polho." Meyer participates in the night watch in Nuevo Yibeljoj. Payne and CPTer Lynn Stoltzfus join the pilgrimage on its final days arriving in Mexico City and the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Wednesday December 6

Planning continues in Nuevo Yibeljoj for the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the 12th. Meyer arranges to accompany members of the community on their coffee harvest the next day, but camp representatives say to wait for the completion of discussions between the Mesa Directiva of the Abejas and the National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH) regarding accompaniment for the Abejas' coffee harvest. In past years the coffee harvest has been accompanied by brigades of Mexican observers, due to fear of paramilitary attacks.

Thursday December 7

News arrives in Nuevo Yibeljoj that the CNDH has denied the Abejas' request for coffee harvest accompaniment brigades, choosing to believe the word of the municipal president that "there are no longer paramilitaries in Chenalho county." The community decides that those with coffee fields in tense areas will go to harvest in groups of at least five, without international accompaniment, so as to avoid problems with soldiers and immigration.

Friday December 8

Pablo Salazar Mendiguchia, the first non-PRI governor of the state of Chiapas in 80 years, takes office. CPTer Scott Kerr talks with the new commander of the military base near X'oyep, and discovers that he is unaware of the history of tension between the people of X'oyep and the military. On January 3, 1997, when the military first arrived, the women of X'oyep encircled the community and prevented soldiers from entering.

Saturday December 9

The pilgrims (see past releases) and CPTers Payne and Stolztfus arrive in the Basilica in Mexico City, where they are welcomed by a huge gathering of indigenous people from all across Mexico.

Sunday December 10

Payne and Stoltzfus meet with various social justice and Mennonite groups in Mexico City to share experiences and discuss possible further connections with CPT.

Monday December 11

In his first official action as governor of Chiapas, Salazar visits the Abeja displaced camp of X'oyep. CPTers Kindy, Meyer, and Kerr join with thousands of Abejas from all over Chenalho county in the welcoming festivities. Salazar meets for several hours with the Mesa Directiva of the Abejas, gives a short speech, and leaves. He promises to try to implement the thirteen requests of the Abejas, covering a wide range of issues: health, education, poverty, demilitarization, and others. Reaction to the visit among Abeja leaders is positive, but guarded: "His words are good. We are beginning to see clouds and feel the first drops, but it remains to be seen if it will actually rain... If change comes in Chiapas, it will not come from the government, it will come from the people. We must not put our hope in governors and presidents, but in God. We must continue our organization and our struggle."

Tuesday December 12

Payne and Stoltzfus participate in an all-night vigil in the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe with tens of thousands of indigenous people and supporters from all over Mexico.

Friday December 15

Kindy, Meyer, and Kerr travel to Acteal for the reception of the pilgrims returning from Mexico City. Over 1500 Abejas gather for the welcoming mass and fiesta, and the CPT Mexico team is reunited.

Monday December 18

Kerr and Stoltzfus travel to the indigenous community of Moises Gandhi for an overnight stay, where they meet with members of SERPAJ, a Latin American peace organization interested in exploring further ties with CPT Mexico.

Tuesday December 19

A cold front blows through Chiapas, bringing with it rainstorms and strong winds. A number of tin-and-plastic houses in the Nuevo Yibeljoj displaced camp are partially destroyed by the winds, drenching the families and all of their belongings. Meyer and other internationals in the camp go from house to house in the rain helping the families rebuild.

Friday December 22

The whole team gathers in Acteal to attend the third anniversary commemoration of the massacre of 45 men, women, and children by a government-supported paramilitary group. Although some indigenous men have been imprisoned for the massacre, the same paramilitary group is still active in Chenalho and the source of much fear in Abeja communities and displaced camps.

Saturday December 23

The team meets with the new Mesa Directiva of the Abejas to discuss possible ways CPT could work more closely with the Abejas in nonviolence, including the possibility of Abejas joining CPT teams in other parts of the world and bringing that experience back to strengthen their struggle. The ideas are received with energy and enthusiasm, and will be taken to the representatives of the various communities for further consideration.

Sunday December 24

The team gathers in San Cristobal to spend Christmas together.

_______________________

Christian Peacemaker Teams is a program of Brethren, Quaker and Mennonite
Churches. CPT P. O. Box 6508 Chicago, IL 60680 tel. 312-455-1199 FAX
312-432-1213, E-Mail cpt@igc.org WEB www.prairienet.org/cpt

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From: http://www.rca.org/mission/letters/sterk.html (See the site for photos)

A Missionary Letter from the Sterks

January 2001

Ejercito Nacional #35
San Cristobal de Las Casas
Chiapas, Mexico

Email: vcsterk@mundomaya.com.mx

Dear Friends,

Palms, poinsettias, pineapples, piñatas, and pageants formed the setting of our Chiapas Christmas. Since our family wasn’t here, we accepted the invitation to celebrate Christmas with Tzotzil Christians in the jungle area of Chiapas, eleven hours from our home in the mountains.

Instead of boots and mittens we packed bathing suits and summer clothes, along with books and Bibles, the keyboard and guitar, and the video projector with lots of Bible videos for the five special worship services. A warm welcome matched the warm climate as we moved our sleeping bags into a thatched-roof guest room next to the church kitchen.

Exchanging gifts isn’t a Tzotzil Christmas tradition, but generous giving is. Special offerings of pesos and food are gathered, and everyone within walking distance is invited to share in the Christmas fiesta and feast. We were impressed to observe the entire community giving their time and gifts: the women and girls patted out corn tortillas while the men killed the cow and prepared the meat for the Christmas feast. Some worked on the church windows, some cleaned, and some prepared the set for the Christmas pageant, one of the big attractions.

Our contribution was music, sermons, and videos that villagers crowded to see each night until almost midnight. The children had a great time breaking two piñatas and rushing in to grab as much candy as they could.

Attendance doubled as God’s Christmas gift was presented in Scripture, song, drama, and video to packed audiences. Visitors were treated to a beef dinner--a real treat to these jungle-dwellers.

While we packed the car the morning after Christmas, we were presented with gifts of coconuts, oranges, bananas, coffee, black beans, and tortillas. We were truly blessed to share Christmas with the generous Tzotzil Christians.

As you put up your 2001 calendars, we ask you to join us in prayer as we translate, teach, and work with the new Christian governor, Pablo Salazar, to bring release of innocent prisoners and reconciliation to the indigenous people of Chiapas.

Your coworkers for the Prince of Peace,

Vern and Carla Sterk

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Monday 1 January 2001

Mexico frees 17 rebels to fulfil peace condition

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico: The Mexican government freed 17 Zapatista rebels in the strife-torn state of Chiapas, complying with another condition set by rebels to resume peace talks stalled in 1996.

''Today we take a significant step forward for peace,'' Chiapas governor Pablo Salazar said at the ceremony outside the Cerro Hueco prison near Tuxtla Gutierrez.

The freeing of the rebels is another show of good faith by the nascent government of president Vicente Fox, who pledged at his Dec. 1 inauguration to strive for peace in Chiapas. On Dec. 22 the Mexican army withdrew troops from a key posting in rebel territory.

The national Zapatista Liberation Army (EZLN) took up arms on Jan. 1, 1994, to demand respect for the rights of Mexico's 10 million indigenous peoples. About 200 army and rebel soldiers were killed in the uprising, which lasted 10 days, and subsequent clashes have taken hundreds more lives.

Salazar said on Saturday morning ceremony that the government would take steps to free another 86 rebels being held in the jail. (Reuters)

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From: http://www.prairienet.org/cpt/ChiapasLiturgyeng.html

PRAYER VIGIL AT CERESO NO. 5, SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, CHIAPAS

JANUARY 30, 2001

Today is the World Day of Nonviolent Action (Dia Mundial de la No Violencia Activa), commemorating the anniversary of the death of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi worked nonviolently in the struggle for justice in India in the first half of the 20th century, was frequently imprisoned for his work, and died by an assassin's bullet 53 years ago, in 1948. Today, in Gandhi's spirit of non-violent activism, we are remembering prisoners, especially prisoners of conscience and those imprisoned for the cause of justice and peace; and those imprisoned unjustly or without due process. We light these 100 candles remembering all political prisoners. We invite you to join us in a time of prayer. [Silence while candles are lit.]

Scripture: Luke 4:14-21.

[Silence]

Song: Sancto, Sancto

L. We pray for all people according to their needs ;

Response: God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

L. We give thanks to those throughout history and today who have risked their freedom and their lives in the cause of justice:

For Jesus of Nazareth, who was imprisoned and executed by political authorities;

For Mahatma Gandhi;

For other prisoners and martyrs [invite people to name some...]

Rx.

L. We pray for all prisoners of conscience and political prisoners throughout the world; we pray for a free and just society open to hearing diverse political views without feeling threatened. And pray for the release of those whose only crime has been to speak the truth.

Rx.

L. We pray for all the political prisoners in this prison and in other prisons in Chiapas.

Rx.

L. For those imprisoned unjustly, and for those that languish in prison without due process; we pray for just treatment and the rule of law.

Rx.

L. We give thanks for the advances that Governor Pablo Salazar has made in releasing political prisoners and pray that further steps will be taken, especially on the federal level.

Rx.

L. We pray for all prisoners everywhere and for their families; that those who are incarcerated may feel God's presence and see the light of hope even in the darkest places; that the families whose loved ones are imprisoned may know God's comfort during the time of separation, and that God will grant them strength and resources to carry on under additional economic and psychological burdens.

Rx.

L. We pray for an end to violence, for the transformation of hearts of those that have used or would use violence, and for an infusion of God's grace and peace into those hearts.

Rx.

L. We pray for forgiveness for our complicity with unjust structures and violent systems, and for a cleansing of violence and vengeance from our own hearts.

Rx.

L. We pray for all the poor and for thosse imprisoned by conditions of oppression and economic hardship, and pray for a just society under the reign of God in which all people will live togethere in freedom, gathering around the same table to enjoy the abundance of God's gifts and grace.

Rx.

L. We pray for wisdom and courage to help bring in the Reign of God that Jesus proclaimed; to liberate the captives and the oppressed; to give sight to the blind, and to manifest a year of jubilee.

Rx.

L. We know that God hears our prayers, spoken and unspoken, and is near to all who call upon the name of God. In this assurance we commend all our prayers to the God of justice and Peace, who reigns over all creation now and forever.

Rx: Amen.

[Silence] [Other appropriate readings]

Songs: Nada te Turbe; Tu has venido a la orilla.

Sponsored by: ECAP (Equipos Cristianos de Accion por la Paz). Tel. (in Chiapas): 678-5905; e-mail: cptmx@laneta.apc.org. In conjunction with a vigil sponsored by SERPAJ (Servicio Paz y Justicia) - Morelos and students of UNAM, to be held in front of the National Palace, Mexico, D. F. on the same day.

A Young Man's Trip to Mexico

Trip to Altamira

What I did This Summer

DREAMS OF THE GREAT EARTHCHANGES - MAIN INDEX