This is a translation of Jaime Aviles' newspaper column EL TONTO DEL PUEBLO titled: "Zedillo: la guerra perdida" ("Zedillo: the lost war")

It was published in LA JORNADA on January 10, 1998 and translated by Global Exchange Chiapas Staff.

1. Initially taken by surprise on the first of January 1994, the Mexican army took back the cities occupied militarily by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) within a few days. On January 16, four days after the huge peace demonstration in the Zócalo of Mexico City, the Mexican Army took up position 80 km from Guadalupe Tepeyac, in the canyon of Las Margaritas, and at a similar distance from the ejido of San Miguel, in the canyon of Ocosingo. Federal troops maintained these positions until December 19 of the same year, when the Zapatistas--without firing a single shot--began their second military campaign of that year.

The strategic mobilization of the Mexican Army in December 1994 was in preparation for the attack on EZLN positions in February 1995. In March and April, while the format for the reinitiation of dialogue was being agreed--formally broken off by the EZLN on June 10th of the previous year--the State security apparatus, under the cover of the Mexican Army, took its first steps to organize a paramilitary group in the north of Chiapas, outside of the so-called conflict zone.

In May 1995, Paz y Justicia (Peace and Justice) appeared on the scene to start a new, surreptitious kind of warfare, technically referred to as low intensity conflict. During the rest of 1995 and all of 1996, the State intelligence services worked tenaciously for the extension of the low intensity war in the Highlands region [of Chiapas].

2. The creation of paramilitary militias in the Highlands was the responsibility of General Mario Renan Castillo Fernández, commander of the Seventh Military Region with its headquarters in Tuxtla Guttierez [capital of Chiapas]. Experts under his command, trained like him in the school of counterinsurgency at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, took on the detailed task of finding out, in ball park terms, just how big the EZLN areas of influence were in the mountain chains that surround the city of San Cristobal.

No doubt incredulous at the extent to which EZLN influence had spread, the counterinsurgency specialists began to examine, in close detail, those municipalities that displayed the greatest tensions between indigenous zapatistas and those affiliated to the PRI.

Their initial investigations revealed that within the poorest of the poor existed small groups of people that were even poorer. Using the PRI municipal structures, the State apparatus began to sow the first seeds of paramilitarization within this group. In May 1997, when the intellectual authors of the paramilitary project were convinced that they had sufficient numbers, the new stage of the hidden war began.

Between May and September 1997, the paramilitaries, who little by little had been forming the Indigenous Antizapatista Revolutionary Movement (MIRA), began their harrassment campaign against EZLN support populations, mixing selective terror with the harrassment of entire villages; later, as Samuel Ruiz [the Archbishop of the Diocese of San Cristobal] explained in his interview with [television journalist] Ricardo Rocha (December 14 1997), the process of plundering whole communities, robbing harvests and burning houses began.

From September to November, the paramilitary offensive reached its peak with a deliberate strategy to maximum chaos by displacing thousands of EZLN supporters into the mountains. They were deprived of everything in the process: shelter, clothing, food, work, and security. When the press finally woke up to the barbarity, the war was reduced to a level of intensity that would prevent displaced people from reorganizing their daily lives.

Then, taking advantage of the fact that the country had already gone on holiday, Acteal happened.

3. The killing on December 22 was a strategic strike, albeit badly calculated and executed. With the complicity of the State Public Security police (who put a defensive ring around the area to protect the paramilitaries); the logistical coordination of Uriel Jarquin and Homero Tovilla, political functionaries of the (ex) governor, Ruiz Ferro; the supervision of State Counsel of Public Security (chief organ of the counterinsurgency) and the consent of the (ex) Secretary of Internal Affairs, Emilio Chuayffet Chemor, the murderers arrived at Acteal. According to the most recent investigations, they were prepared for [armed] confrontation with the displaced people, not to riddle them with bullets.

The inhabitants of the camp, however, who were devout Catholics and in and case unarmed and unable to defend themselves, decided to start praying once they heard that an attack was imminent. Ricardo Rocha, in his excellent [radio] program last Sunday, demonstrated how the majority of the bodies had entry wounds in the back.

The paramilitaries had precise orders and they carried them out to the full. Their only problem, however, was that they over did it. According to the head of the Red Cross team who helped out at the scene of the massacre, Uriel Jarquin arrived that night to try and disappear a certain number of the bodies that they had found "heaped together". A State crime had just taken place in Acteal. What came next, as is consistent with the general outline of this war, was a cynical explanation from the State.

4. On December 23, the President of the Republic, Doctor Ernesto Zedillo, reacted by declaring that lIt was a cruel, absurd and unacceptable act". The General Attorneyms Office for the Republic brought the investigation under federal jurisdiction and promised to investigate "until we get to the bottom of it". The President of the National Human Rights Commission, after a period of hesitation that gave her enough time to send no less than three members of her staff, finally deigned to make a personal visit. The nation's top lawyer acted swiftly. On December 25, as all the facts appear to suggest, he organised for some of the paramilitaries to "be found" on the road at the same time as the funeral cortege of the 45 victims, "capturing" them immediately in what still seems like a "voluntary surrender" to protect the jackals and "obtain" evidence. Immediately, his investigations led him to discover that it had all been the product of an "intercommunity conflict", allowing him to continue "apprehending" the less important players.

Having been planned with great care, however, the war maintained its steady course. After the killing, the State security apparatus detected "movements of Zapatista troops in the Jungle" and sent 5,000 soldiers to... the Highlands. The regular combat forces, from what it appears, occupied the area that the irregular forces had "prepared". Thanks to this operation, Doctor Zedillo's administration has managed to find the missing link in his grand annihilation plan. We must not forget that the regime continued to reinforce its military installations in the canyons throughout 1995 and 1996.

5. From the "government's" point of view, everything is now ready for the final offensive against the EZLN. With huge numbers of troops in the Highlands, the Mexican Army has been advancing towards the rebels' mountain positions since Thursday with the intention of capturing subcomandante Marcos. Taking the "top leader" continues to be a priority for the military strategists who want to negotiate the surrender of the rebel bases. Four years of argument has not made them change their opinion on this point.

The regime is playing against time. Things will come to a head the day after tomorrow when a world wide mobilization, as yet unprecedented in this war, will take place in Mexico, Paris, Rome, Berne, Madrid, Barcelona and various cities throughout the United States. The demonstrations will ask Doctor Zedillo to put a stop to his senseless adventure and to honour his commitment to fulfill the San Andres Accords. It will also demand that the countries of the European Union break negotiations on the free trade treaty with Mexico and apply sanctions for human rights abuses against the poorest and most vulnerable people in Chiapas. There will also be calls for Bill Clinton's government to suspend the military aid that Mexico is using against a justified rebellion by its Indian people.

Another reading suggests that the new Secretary for Internal Affairs, Francisco Labastida Ochoa - who represents an alternative view point within the PRI to the factional interests of the Chiapan governors, but still buys into the neoliberal megaprojects for the region in which the Indians do not fit - is employing the Mexican Army irresponsibly and adopting the macabre strategy designed by Chuayffet to force the EZLN into negotiating under the most unfavorable circumstances possible.

If this is the case we are facing another military offensive similar to the one on February 10, 1995, and the risks for Zedillo, Labastida, the image of the Mexican Army and the stability of the country are extremely high. If something goes wrong in these cold blooded calculations, the backlash could be severe.

6. Meanwhile, by employing generals to carry out functions that belong to the civil police, Labastida, either intentionally or by neglect, has brought about an open and public conflict with the Catholic Church. Now only the President's Office stands between these two institutions. The statement by the Secretary for Internal Affairs that "Samuel Ruiz counts in the peace process" will not be enough to alleviate the feeling of offense felt by the church hierarchy, a dreadful outcome for someone who has been head of internal affairs for barely seven days.

The most important point, however, has not yet been mentioned: since January 12 1994, the EZLN in obedience with demands made of it by civil society, converted itself, paradoxically, into a non-violent political force. In June of that historic year, having broken off dialogue with the Salinas government, the Zapatistas initiated a dialogue with Mexican civil society and the whole world that has continued uninterrupted. In this same spirit, the EZLN resumed dialogue with Doctor Zedillo and, despite numerous provocations from Ruiz Ferro, continued to negotiate until September 1996, having signed agreements with representatives of the President's Office (which have never been fulfilled).

By completely embracing pacifism, the EZLN has won the political street war. This goes a long way to explaining why the regime, having failed to beat the weak and illiterate at the negotiating table, persists in its desperate attempt to destroy them militarily: an attempt at genocide (that appeared in its most concrete form in Acteal on December 22) that no civilized country on the planet has seen fit to support; on the contrary, they have shown nothing but horror and genuine concern. Or perhaps Doctor Zedillo can show us just one demonstration of support from either within Mexico or abroad? Has there been any kind of statement whatsoever from a political party, government, parliament or religious authority that will help him to shoulder this barbarity to its logical conclusion? Mexico is today living through its most serious diplomatic incident in many years, and the causes of this calamity cannot even be justified by saying that we are going -- and that they are taking us -- in the right direction.

Let's get out there and stop this war just one more time on Monday. The appointment is at four o'clock in the Zocalo.