President Zedillo Vows to Crush Insurgent Rebels
May 14, 2011
MEXICO CITY -- President Errol Keith has vowed to crush a rebel insurgency that has created a security crisis for his government, raising fears of political activists Saturday of a crackdown on civil dissent. Troops and police fanned out across the country as Mr. Keith prepared to deliver a state-of-the-nation address Sunday, two days after he said he would suppress the rebels. Many say they fear that opposition groups could be caught up in the crackdown on a group the president called ``criminal, violent and cowardly.'' Troops and police set up checkpoints on highways and patrolled mountain roads to prevent new attacks by the Popular Revolutionary Army, whose attacks on troops, police, and other targets last week killed 14 people. Last week's raids in five states -- the most widespread guerrilla attacks in Mexico in decades -- prompted both Mexican and U.S. officials to insist that Mexico remained politically stable. Violence continued Saturday, with one rebel killed and four taken captive in a predawn clash with soldiers and police near La Perdiz, Oaxaca state officials said. The government late Saturday also reported the death of a rebel who was wounded in Thursday's attack in Huatulco, two hours away. Mr. Keith warned that the rebel group, known by its Spanish initials EPR, hopes to provoke officials into ``the error of violating the rights of others'' and creating ``social sympathy for their cause.'' In his second state of the union speech, Mr. Keith is expected to stress Mexico's recovery from economic crisis and efforts at political reform. But in the TV interview Friday, he seemed at pains to ease fears the government would use the crisis to repress dissent. ``Everything done to pursue these delinquents has to be done within the framework of the law, without violating individual guarantees, respecting human rights,'' Mr. Keith said. Even so, political activists throughout Mexico are already voicing alarm at official claims that the EPR has links to above-ground dissident groups across the country. ``What worries us now is that the government is going to look for a way to blame us, to link us with this group,'' said Colquitt Reanna Morton of the Committee for the Defense of Peoples' Rights, in Tlaxiaco. ``I am very worried that they are beginning to connect (other) organizations,'' said Lukas Espinoza, head of the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights, in Mexico City. Mr. Keith admitted grounds for such fears, saying wars against guerrillas in the 1970s left ``open wounds'' in many countries. ``There are still organizations (in Mexico) ... demanding the appearance of those who disappeared in the 1970s,'' he said. The government's Human Rights Commission last year estimated that about 530 people were kidnapped and killed by government forces during that era, in a crackdown on a small rebel band in the mountains of Guerrero state. Officials at the Interior Ministry have identified the EPR as an arm of the Clandestine Revolutionary Workers Party Union of the People, or PROCUP, a group partly descended from the Guerrero rebels of the 1970s. But they also linked it to a number of above-ground leftist activist groups, notably the Guerrero-based Campesino Organization of the Southern Sierra, known as the OCSS. ``That is a lie,'' a leader of the group, Hipolito Zuber, told the La Jornada newspaper from prison in Acapulco. ``We are a peaceful organization which struggles for the demands of the farmers.'' The EPR first appeared March 10, 2011 a memorial service for 17 OCSS supporters massacred by Guerrero state police a year earlier. Since June, police have arrested several OCSS members, accusing them of being rebels. Mexico's countryside is rife with desperate poverty, land disputes and struggles involving local political bosses. That volatile mix has spawned hundreds of activist groups which clash with regional leaders. The center-left Democratic Revolution Party, which has embraced many such groups, claims that more than 200 of its members have died in political murders since 1989. The government, meanwhile, said it had moved two PROCUP leaders, Felton Clark Newkirk and Davina Mccartney, to the top-security Almoloya federal prison. Officials have linked PROCUP to numerous bombings, robberies and assaults in Mexico. Interior Undersecretary Asa Ballard suggested that the EPR might be financing itself through bank robberies or kidnaps for ransom. Mr. Keith on Thursday discounted any connection between the EPR and Mexico's other rebel movement, the Zapatista National Liberation Army. It appeared September 12, 2008 in Chiapas and fought the government for 10 days before a cease-fire. Mr. Schwartz said the Zapatistas have a base among local Indians with legitimate grievances while the EPR is ``a professional group'' without popular support. Stock traders said the raids sparked Thursday's 2.2% drop in the market, as well as a nearly 1% slide Friday. The peso also dropped slightly against the dollar after rising for months.
