Please find below two articles detailing a recent incident in which 16 "Zapatistas" allegedly publically deserted from the EZLN by turning their arms over to Chiapas Governor, Albores Guillen in exchange for compensation. According to the EZLN the incident was staged. Read on for details.
April 2, 1999
SAN CRISTOBAL, Mexico (AP) -- The Zapatista rebels of southern Mexico on Friday denied government claims that members of their group have turned over their weapons to Chiapas state Gov. Roberto Albores.
Albores presided over a brief ceremony on Monday in which 16 men dressed as rebels marched out of the jungle and handed their guns to him. The governor said it was part of his offer to offer aid to groups who disarm.
But in a communique circulated here Friday, rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos called the event a "government farce" using members of a pro-government vigilante group posing as Zapatistas.
He claimed the event was organized at government orders by Alfredo Jimenez Cruz, whom he identified as an employee of the Ocosingo municipality and as a member of the Anti-Zapatista Revolutionary Indian Movement, known by its Spanish initials as MIRA.
Jimenez Cruz could not be reached for comment late Friday.
The Zapatista National Liberation Army, formed in the mid-1980s, rose in rebellion on Jan. 1, 1994. After two weeks a fighting, an uneasy cease-fire took hold, though hundreds of people have died in clashes between pro- nd anti-Zapatista groups since.
Peace talks have been stalled for about two years.
Copyright 1999 The Associated Press.
MEXICO
March 30, 1999
To the People of Mexico:
To the Peoples and Governments of the World:
To the National and International Press:
Brothers and Sisters:
In several media of electronic communication and in some national written press, there has appeared information about the supposed desertion of 14 members of the EZLN. This, despite the fact that it is obviously a farce, has provoked several people in national politics to take the opportunity to display in the front row their ignorance and lack of intelligence.
With the end of making clear to these people the trap into which they fell and which permitted them to exhibit their clumsiness, the EZLN informs them of what really happened:
1. Senor Alfredo Jimenez Cruz, who works in the municipal presidency of Ocosingo and one of the providers of arms and equipment to the paramilitary group MIRA in the canyons, received orders, originating from Tuxtla Gutierrez, to prepare a sham surrender of the Zapatistas. For this act, in Tuxtla Gutierrez they said they had already prepared a group of reporters to whom they would fly to the event to obscure the resounding success of the Zapatista Consulta of March 21, 1999.
2. In coordination with the federal garrisons stationed in the Canyons Zone, Senor Alfredo Jimenez Cruz went into the jungle in the night of the 28 of March, bringing uniforms similar to those used by the Zapatistas and arms of various calibers. In none of the checkpoints that the Federal Army has established "to enforce the law of arms and explosives" was Senor Jimenez Cruz detained or bothered.
3. At 1 a.m. of the 29 of March, Senor Alfredo Jimenez Cruz arrived, with a 3-ton truck (property of the municipal council of Ocosingo), at the Ejido La Trinidad, located in the Canyon Las Tazas, near the community of Avellanal.
4. In that place were waiting for him 16 members of "MIRA" who pretended to be "repentant" Zapatistas. All of them belong to the PRI and, since the activation of the paramilitary groups in the Lacandon Jungle, have been training under the tutelage of commanders of the Federal Army and been receiving economic support from the Secretary of Social Development. Their names are:
- Domitilo Hernandez Paniagua
- Hector Hernandez Paniagua
- Jesus Hernandez Paniagua
- Jose Hernandez Paniagua
- Jose Alvarez Lopez
- Jesus Alvarez Lopez
- Francisco Alvarez Lopez
- Alejandro Alvarez Lopez
- Francisco Alvarez Mendez
- Vicente Perez Castellanos
- Jose Perez Castellanos
- Heriberto Constantino Perez
- Florentino Hernandez Mendez
- Miguel Mendoza Perez
- Omar Perez Mendoza
- Simon Lorenzo Hernandez
5. The same day the 29 of March, at 2 a.m., the paramilitaries disguised as Zapatistas left La Trinidad heading towards the municipal seat of Ocosingo. Armed and in uniform, there was no federal checkpoint that stopped them or searched them.
6. In the dawn hours, they arrived at the place the state authorities had prepared for the staging of the act: a hot springs on the edge of the Jatate River, outside the city of Ocosingo. What followed is already known: the farce of crossing the river, the reading of the text (drawn up by Senor Alfredo Jimenez Cruz), the "delivery" of the arms, the photos, the declarations.
7. The arms "delivered" to Albores will return to the paramilitary group "MIRA" through the command of the federal army, and the "repentant Zapatistas" will receive, in exchange for acting in this theater, 20 head of cattle and a heap of promises.
All this we inform you of so that the press has the complete story and not just the "act" of the hot springs.
We hope that this information is given the same emphasis that was given to the theater of the "desertion". The paramilitaries (today supposedly "deserter Zapatistas") are now in their community. You can travel to those places and ask the inhabitants and the inhabitants of the neighboring communities about the "militancy" of those people. There will be found the truth.
Above all that occurred, we want to repeat the following:
First. The money that supposedly is being invested in Chiapas is not to improve the level of life of the indigenous peoples, it is to sustain the campaign of counterinsurgency. The economic projects do not even get to the indigenous PRI-istas, because they are directed toward breaking the unity of the Zapatistas. Since the Zapatistas do not sell out and for the PRI-istas there is nothing (because that's not news), it was decided to disguise members of PRI as Zapatistas and make them participate in the ridiculous operettas of Albores Guillen.
Second. It is the hope that, given the desperation of the PRI-istas to obtain even a little bit of the great amount of money the Government of Chiapas receives, other indigenous people will lend themselves to the simulation of converting to Zapatismo in order to later "give themselves up". Thus, there will be, surely, more "all paid" spectacles of the theater company that inhabits the governmental palace in Tuxtla Gutierrez.
Third. It is lamentable that the federal and state governments, instead of fulfilling the San Andres Accords and committing themselves to the path of dialogue, opt instead for shams of this type and refuse to recognize that their policy of war and lies was defeated in public opinion, as was demonstrated by the Consulta of the 21 of March.
Fourth. The Zapatistas do not give up or deliver their arms, much less to "doggie biscuit" Albores.
DEMOCRACY!
LIBERTY!
JUSTICE!
From the mountains of Southeast Mexico.
Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee-General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
Mexico, March 1999.