by Julia Preston
New York Times
April 12, 1998

Mexico City, April 11 -- About 500 federal and state police swept through a farming cooperative in Chiapas state at dawn today, after Indian residents there who support the Zapatista rebels declared their indepedence from the state government.

At a news conference today in the capital of Chiapas, Tuxtla Gutierrez, Gov. Roberto Albores Guillen said 20 people were arrested in the police operation, including 11 foreigners.

At least six of the foreigners were at the cooperative as human rights observers representing the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Center, the leading human rights organization in Chiapas, officials of the center said. They had gone to observe the ceremony Friday where the cooperative announced it had become an "autonomous" community governed by Zapatista authorities.

Among the foreigners detained were three Americans, whose names were given by Mexican immigration officials as Michael John Sabato, Jeffrey Wright Conant, and Travis Blaize Loller. No other information about them was provided.

Other foreigners who were being held by immigration officials were from Germany, Spain, Canada, and Belgium.

Indian supporters of the Zapatista Liberation National Liberation Army have set up their own independent mayor's offices in at least 30 towns and villages in Chiapas. The Zapatista authorities keep their own birth and death records and since January they have often refused to allow state and federal officials to enter their communities.

Governor Guillen, signaling a sharp escalation in the confrontations with the Zapatistas, said the Zapatista towns violated the Mexican Constitution and warned that he would not allow any more of them to be set up.

"This action by my government is not against anyone. It is simply in favor of the state of law," Mr. Guillen said.

Mr. Guillen said that there had been no violence in the police operation and that the agents were unarmed. The police swept through the cooperative, which is located in the hot canyons of northern Chiapas, after its residents rebaptized it Ricardo Flores Magon, after a political leader of the 1910 Mexican revolution. The ceremony was held on the birth date of Emiliano Zapata, the revolutionary hero from whom the Zapatistas take their name.

Bu the Fray Bartolome Center reported that one resident's house was burned down and called the arrests illegal since the police carried no warrants.

Since February the Government has cracked down on foreigners in Chiapas whom it accuses of supporting the Zapatistas.

Zapatista guerrilla leaders have argued that they are setting up the independent towns to carry out unilaterally some of the terms of an agreement they signed with the Government in February 1996.

Later that year the talks collapsed, and the two sides have been in a hostile standoff ever since.

Although they have not returned to fighting, violent clashes have erupted between government and Zapatista factions in the Indian regions of the state. At least eight foreigners have been deported, including several who served as human rights monitors in Zapatista villages, where they are keeping track of the performance of Government forces.