The News
January 9, 2002
By Reed Lindsay

For eight months, the Lacondon jungle has been shrouded in silence.

In April, the Chiapas-based Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) cut off all communication with President Vicente Fox's administration, accusing the government of "sabotaging" the peace process after Congress passed a watered-down version of an indigenous rights amendment the rebel group demanded.

The reform - and with it the fate of the eight-year conflict between the government and the Zapatistas - now stands before the Supreme Court, which is expected to give its decision in late February.

"We have to wait for the resolution of the Supreme Court," said Dep. Emilio Ulloa, a member of the congressional peace commission (Cocopa), in an interview Thursday. "The EZLN rejected the reform, but they haven't said what they are going to do if the Supreme Court passes it. We don't know how they're going to react."

Hopes for a solution to the stand-off soared when Fox took office 13 months ago, ending 71-years of authoritarian one-party rule.

Responding to conditions set by the guerrilla group before it would return to peace talks, Fox closed seven military bases and sent an indigenous rights reform endorsed by the Zapatistas to Congress.

Last March, rebel leader Subcommander Marcos led a caravan of Zapatistas and their supporters from Chiapas to Mexico City, where EZLN leaders made an unprecedented appearance before the Chamber of Deputies, urging legislators to approve the constitutional reform.

But when Congress passed a revised bill that did not grant indigenous communities the political autonomy and rights to natural resources they had demanded, the Zapatistas broke off contact with the government. Congressmen from Fox's National Action Party (PAN) were the most adamant opponents of the original initiative endorsed by indigenous rights groups and the EZLN.

Hundreds of indigenous-populated municipalities and the state government of Oaxaca have challenged the constitutionality of the reform before the Supreme Court.

The Fox administration, meanwhile, has continued making unanswered calls for the Zapatistas to return to the negotiating table.

If the court rules the reform unconstitutional, all sides would start "from scratch," said Ulloa, with Congress likely being compelled to draft new legislation.

On the other hand, if the reform is approved by the nation's highest court, the ball would be thrown in the court of the Zapatistas, who have refused to yield on their demand that Fox's original draft be approved.

Such a decision likely would further polarize the conflict, said Ulloa.

"I agree with the representative of the Pope, there is a nervous calm in Chiapas," he said, referring to a comment made by papal envoy Cardinal Roger Etchegaray in his trip to the state this week. "Everything is tranquil now, but it is a place where from one moment to the next conflicts and problems can arise."