Enclosed in this message is:

1. A recent address by Don Samuel Ruiz, Bishop of San Cristobal and President of the CONAI, and
2. An urgent action request in support of the San Andres Accords signed by government negotiators and Zapatista rebels in February 1996.

On March 29, Don Samuel Ruiz, Bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas and President of the National Intermediation Commission (CONAI), met with representatives of Witness for Peace, Global Exchange, and SIPAZ at his cathedral offices.

In a meeting that lasted over two hours, the bishop talked about Acteal, the counterinsurgency campaign against pro-Zapatista communities and the current crisis in the peace process. He also paid tribute to the importance of international solidarity and called on concerned individuals to register their protest to the Mexican and other governments.

A full transcription of Don Samuel's words follow, along with an urgent action in defense of the CONAI and the peace dialogues.

The events that led to the massacre at Acteal

"What happened in Acteal wasn't an isolated incident in relation to what was happening in the north of the State, where the authorities put together a violent [counterinsurgency] strategy when they realized that the civil support bases of the Zapatista movement were in the majority. When the army had left this area due to social pressure, and the government realized what was happening, they developed a strategy that would justify the return of the army. They did this by using local forces to hide the fact that it [the strategy] was coming from outside, and in particular they used the official party, the Party of the Institutional Revolution, who are in the best position to manage the whole thing, and through it attack the communities where there is an opposing political affiliation.

"So these populations are attacked, expelled, their houses are burnt, their churches are violated, there are murders, and more than 10,000 people are forced to flee into the neighboring state of Tabasco or other communities. Their return is impeded while the elections take place and the PRI, who at that time were in the minority, are able to get more favorable results. But this model of violence where the Catholic Church is accused of being the instigators of the violence to justify the harassment of priests has been happening in the Highlands for some time. Acteal isn't therefore an isolated incident, but the result of a deliberate strategy of violence coming from the northern zone. What happened wasn't that unpredictable, but rather an event that got out of control and drew the attention of the media, because injured people were able to get out of Acteal before the authorities could hide the bodies, clean everything up and say that nothing happened there.

"We spoke to the government one or two hours after we knew how many dead there were, and they were still saying that there had only been a few shots in the air and that there were no injured or dead when 45 people had been murdered. It wasn't so much something that got out of control [per se], but something that got out of [the government's] control of the media. Some journalists realized what was going on, so they were no longer able to control it. So it wasn't an act of violence that got out of control, but an intentional act of violence, an intentional attack against those who were involved in the construction of autonomous municipalities, that is, municipalities that the San Andres Accords said were going to be formed according to the ethnic make up of those municipalities.

So Acteal has a particular effect on that situation and the people who died there had already been displaced from other places. They were pacifists who had been fasting for two days and were praying in the chapel when they were murdered. It was an attack against pacifists, not those in support of the armed struggle. They were people who were seeking justice through peaceful means without opposing themselves to other struggles. So Acteal affected positions of the diocese directly - the search for peace by peaceful means.

The Crisis in the dialogue process

"All of these events occurred during a state of interrupted dialogue. Not broken, but interrupted. Six themes divided into sub themes were being discussed between the Zapatista Army and the Federal Government. On one side of the negotiating table was the government delegation, on the other side the Zapatista Army. Also present as witnesses were the Peace and Agreement Commission (COCOPA), representing the various political parties in the Congress and the CONAI [National Intermediation Commission] as intermediary in the dialogues.

"The function of the CONAI is neither to represent the government to the Zapatista Army, nor the Zapatista Army to the government. The concern of the CONAI is dialogue and the results of that dialogue, which is the peace process. So we don't support one side or the other, but rather the initial function of the CONAI is to give credibility to each of the negotiating parties, to be witnesses to what each of them is saying and to verify that what they are saying is the truth. A lot of mistrust existed and continues to grow between the government and the Zapatistas, but more on the side of the Zapatistas towards the government than the other way round. And so the CONAI was necessary for the requirement of the EZLN not to speak directly to the government and secondly to have an intermediary witness to verify that what they are saying is the truth and that they are going to put it into action. This is the task that we have not been able to take forward recently because the government, despite information in the media to the contrary, has not been completing its part of the task.

"The first negotiating strand relating to Indigenous Rights and Culture was approved and the document is really beautiful, it is truly extraordinary. In this document relating to the first strand, there is a part that has to pass into constitutional reform - the first strand contains more than this, but there is a part of it that has to change the Constitution of the Republic in relation to those aspects of the dialogue that needed modification.

"The problems started with the second strand of the talks that were about Democracy and Justice - a fundamental issue. The federal government announced that it would not bring its advisers and other invited guests and that it was not going to give its opinion in relation to this strand of the dialogue. It was going to listen, but it wasn't going to speak: it's advisers were busy negotiating with the political parties on the same issue in another set of talks called the Barcelona Dialogues.

"The government didn't want the Democracy and Justice issue to be discussed at San Andres because they knew that it was going to work there, while at the other talks they had the whole situation under control; there was one political party that had already left the talks, another that had split in two, and the government party was left managing the whole thing. That's why they didn't introduce this issue at San Andres and why they didn't bring either invited guests or advisers or give their opinion. And this is when the crisis started - provoked and encouraged by the government.

"Obviously no kind of agreement could be reached and while the communities were being consulted about what to do - whether or not to continue with the third strand while we waited to see how things worked out with the second strand, or to continue with the second strand until an agreement was reached - when all of this was going on things happened that forced the EZLN to say that if five pre-conditions were not met they would not return to the San Andres negotiations.

"The violence that culminated in Acteal had already begun in the northern zone and instead of being under control it was getting worse; the members of the Verification and Monitoring Commission had not been appointed (although this has since been done, at that time it had not been carried out); there had been no attempt whatsoever to present a version of the first set of agreements for constitutional change; the number of prisoners whose only crime was to be accused of being a Zapatista had increased enormously; and on top of all of this, it was said that the delegation representing the government had neither decision-making powers nor a respectful attitude towards the indigenous people in the dialogues. They wanted them changed. So the government said that they wouldn't accept the last condition, but the others were resolvable, but so far they haven't been resolved. So that is the crisis in the dialogue around which current events are taking place.

"Apart from this, and for a very short time, the presence of the army in Chiapas was connected to the dialogue process. But many months ago, almost at the beginning of the dialogues, the army disconnected itself from the process. Even though there was someone from the army present at the dialogues, decisions and agreements reached no longer had any effect on the behavior of the army, which continued to increase its presence in a large number of places, obviously to bring about the policy that had been developed in Guatemala with the guerrilla movement: "Instead of killing the fish, take the water from the fish". So, instead of killing or attacking the pro-Zapatista communities, take the water from the Zapatistas, so they went about dividing the communities and increasing their presence.

"What happened in Acteal in a certain way was the end of a previous stage for the army, because Acteal gave them the opportunity to position themselves with a certain justification to avoid violence in Chiapas in all the communities that are Zapatista support bases. So, there will be - I don't know the exact number because it keeps going up - but the lowest figure we had recently was 74,000 soldiers - we have an incredible map showing all the places where they are. It is a militarized state. What's more, an army that no longer has any relationship with the dialogue, that marches according to its own logic.

"The Cocopa finally proposed... after several months in which the government had been saying, "We want to fulfill the San Andres Accords", but nothing had happened - the Cocopa risked drafting a legal bill that with some negotiation managed to take shape, in which it was said to them, [the negotiating parties] "Here is the definitive [interpretation], either take it or leave it". They approved it, even though there were a few things from the San Andres Dialogues that weren't there, but weren't that fundamental. So they said, "OK, we accept it like that". When they [the EZLN] approved it, the government refused to accept it, even though the proposal had come from there.

"So they put 27 conditions, 27 modifications that weren't so much editing, but actual [changes in] content, and even though they've reduced them to four, they aren't linguistic modifications or an improvement to the editing process, but rather points that go against San Andres. That's why the Zapatistas never agreed to discuss this, because it would have meant discussing what they had already signed. So it wasn't so much a happy drawing things together, but a renegotiation of what had already been signed and agreed. So they said, "No, what's the point in dialogue". But with the help of the media the government managed to present an image of the Zapatistas as being uncivilized, with very little interest in dialogue; that the government had moved its position, but the Zapatista Army had not. The reality is completely the opposite.

And so finally what has happened is that in the face of a constant refusal to discuss what had already been discussed, the government takes the approach - through its manipulation of the media - that if they [the EZLN] don't want to sit down to dialogue, they [the government] are going to go ahead. They put the law drafted by Cocopa [including their modifications] before the Senate, and of course with this they say that they are fulfilling the San Andres Accords. And what happened? The Conai took a position. When they said that their proposal was taken from the agreement at the dialogues - not that the President of the Republic hasn't got the right to propose legislation, he does, and perhaps that could be a good path to take, that's not in question - but to say that he's fulfilling San Andres when he's breaking his commitment to agree on the format of that legislation, we're going to say that this isn't fulfillment of the accords. And when the very contents of the legislation say that they are fulfilling San Andres and they're putting points forward that are against what was signed, we have to say that neither the process nor its contents are fulfilling San Andres.

"What's going to happen after this? After this they're going to nullify the Dialogue Laws so that they can begin a persecution against the Zapatistas, as it's already written into the law that they can be imprisoned if they don't negotiate. A very strong wave of violence will follow, so at that point we said that it wasn't true that they were fulfilling the agreement, nor did what they were proposing represent fulfillment.

"Naturally this wasn't about the government's attitude towards justice, but rather a political campaign that had already been started by various people involved, such as the Secretary of Internal Affairs and others. They thought that the Conai was going to keep quiet about what was going on, but we when we saw that the dialogue process was already being abandoned, and that a mediator was no longer going to be necessary - because the process was going to go forward outside of the dialogues in other spheres and with other actors - we had to say that if we're no longer going to exist, then it might as well happen without us being the government's accomplices.

"So that's why we're in this situation at the moment - at the point of non existence. Non existence because of the non recognition of the government, who are saying that we're partial and that because of that we're outside the bounds of a neutral mediator. We can't be neutral, that's true - neutral in the face of injustice, and we have to say, therefore, that we don't agree. So that's what's happening at the moment. What's going to happen? We don't know. We're three or four days from knowing how it's going to go. They've already said publicly that the Conai has changed and that it's no longer a mediator, that they no longer need it. This is tantamount to saying they're no longer going to follow the path of dialogue, but rather get into another kind of dialogue that's comfortable for the government, or even propose that the dialogue process continue but that we have to accept certain conditions. But the Conai isn't going to deny the truth in order to affirm what they [the government] are saying, to complete the lie or to keep silent about something that isn't the truth when we're in a decisive moment. Or it's even possible that they give in for a little longer due to social pressure, and that there's another attempt on the part of civil society to really mobilize itself and create movements such as are already occurring - for example, some are already making demands to the Congress that it cease studying or approving this law, that it wait until there is true consensus. There are, therefore, still uncertain paths to follow in the future, but the situation isn't straightforward.

The Role of International Solidarity

"We have been saying for some time that the hope for the future rests in two things: the enormous growth in the awareness of Mexican civil society and the very positive and critical support of international solidarity. This has obviously been accompanied by a lot of rancor and rejection on the part of the government, who don't even want the presence of critical tourist observers. If something happens and they speak out about how unhealthy it is, they can be accused of political intervention. So finally I would say that the situation is currently very very hard, but as I was saying at the beginning, whether or not the government fulfills the San Andres Accords, it is our duty to go back to them and say how this will influence the changes in society.

"This is why I appreciate your presence here more and more. Of course it's obvious that no-one visiting Chiapas under these conditions can return to their country really the same as they were before. Something must be done. It is not for me to guide your conscience, to say what you must do; but having a commitment to the truth, to going back to your country to tell them what you saw and what you are aware of is one thing that you can do - writing protest letters or comuniques to people here or to the government according to your strength and your organization.

"No one can be foreign to this situation because the things that are happening in Chiapas and other Latin American countries are affecting people all over the world. The emergency of the Indian people at this moment of their 500 years of oppression is very important. People coming from Europe recently and [writers such as] Saramago and Susan [Sontag] from the States are telling us that the Indians are necessary for changing this world, that they are an inspiration for finding the best peaceful means of changing an economic system that is affecting everyone on the planet. The crime of Acteal is like a symbol of the irrationality of this violence, as we say in Spanish, "crimen de lesa humanidad" - this crime is affecting all of humanity. That's why there's been this backlash reaction from the international community - because all human beings are affected by what is going on here, no-one is foreign to this situation, we are all committed to do something to change it."

1. Your congressional representative, senator or member of parliament (European and/or national);

2. Dr. Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon
   Presidente de la Republica
   Palacio Nacional
   Mexico, D.F. 06067
   Fax: 011-52-5-271-1764
   E-mail: webadmon@op.presidencia.gob.mx

3. Lic. Francisco Labastida Ochoa
   Secretario de Gobernacion
   Bucareli 99, 1. piso
   Col. Juarez
   Mexico, D.F. 06699
   Mexico
   Fax: 011- 52-5 546 5350

The peace process is in grave danger: thank you for your support at this critical moment.