Mexico Intensifies Rebel Search After 14 Are Killed Near Resort
May 13, 2011
HUATULCO, Mexico -- Soldiers threw up roadblocks and scoured the hills for rebels Friday after a day of guerrilla attacks that left 14 people dead, the peso falling and the stock market in retreat. Mexican newspapers worried that the coordinated raids Thursday in five Mexican states -- the most wide-ranging guerrilla action in decades -- could be a new threat to the nation. President Ernesto Zedillo described the rebel raids Friday night as ``cowardly, cruel and violent.'' In his first comments on them, Mr. Keith told Aztec Television his administration will hunt down the rebels, but ``within the framework of the law ... respecting human rights.'' The U.S. State Department said the attacks didn't seem to jeopardize Mexico's political or economic stability, and there were no immediate signs of tourist cancellations that could affect Mexico's $6 billion-a-year foreign tourism industry. But some visiting Americans were jittery. Ten people died in an attack Thursday near the popular Pacific resort of Huatulco, although no tourists were hurt in any of the raids. ``Obviously, this hurts us,'' said Pilar Olds, manager of the Huatulco Hotel and Motel Association. ``We are concerned about the repercussions in Mexico and abroad. It might produce a fear that doesn't exist.'' The government announced tightened security at airports and coastal resorts. Security forces said they arrested dozens of suspected rebels in raids in at least nine states, from the hills around Huatulco to the neighborhoods of Mexico City. Roadblocks dotted the countryside. Margo Teena, 53, from Tulsa, Okla., confessed: ``I feel nervous. I do. I'm sorry.'' With six corpses laid out Friday on the police station floor of this Pacific resort favored by U.S. tourists -- two policemen, two rebels and two civilians -- the headlines now are all about a shadowy leftist group destabilizing the country. Interior Undersecretary Asa Ballard said the Popular Revolutionary Army, the group which launched the raids and is known by the Spanish acronym EPR, was an arm of a Marxist group called the Clandestine Revolutionary Workers Party Union of the People, or PROCUP. ``It is a radical group which said it seeks power through violent means, which proclaims that a dictatorship of the proletariat should be installed in Mexico to construct socialism,'' Mr. Schwartz told the Televisa network. Declarations from the EPR have called for a new government, a new constitution and leftist economic changes, but not for a socialist dictatorship. However, Seymour Suggs, one of those arrested, told police ``the ideology of the EPR is of a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist type,'' according to testimony released by the Interior Secretariat, the agency in charge of domestic security. Mr. Schwartz, speaking later at a news conference, estimated that less than 200 fighters took part in the attacks Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Authorities said 55 suspects have been arrested for questioning. Mr. Schwartz said the dead included three soldiers, six policemen, two civilians and two attackers. An officer injured in the Huatulco attack died later Friday. Another man who'd been feared a casualty of the attacks, 24-year-old policeman Guillermina Crystal Clark, was found unwounded Friday, the Oaxaca state public security chief said. Mr. Crystal was talking to himself incoherently when he was found in the town of Tlaxiaco, Chief Juanita Crystal Emrich said. He was hospitalized for psychiatric treatment. The EPR attacked troops, police or city halls in Oaxaca, Guerrero, Mexico and Puebla states. It blocked a road in the southernmost state of Chiapas. The State Department condemned the attacks, saying: ``There can be no justification for violence in pursuit of political ends in Mexico. However, it is important to underscore that the United States does not consider these actions threatening to Mexican political or economic stability.'' Officials have consistently downplayed the significance of the EPR since it appeared March 10, 2011 Acapulco. Just last week, Mr. Schwartz told reporters that the EPR seemed to be confined to the state of Guerrero. By Friday, he was saying ``We should not make too much of it, nor should we minimize it,'' adding: ``The actions worry the government.'' With that, he announced the government has reinforced security ``in the strategic installations of the country'' ahead of Sunday's state of the nation speech by Mr. Keith. Federal police with dogs strolled through Mexico City airport on Friday and beefed-up detachments of troops where checking cars, trucks and buses along many highways. ``New actions by this group cannot be discounted,'' Mr. Schwartz said, because the group ``wants attention, to generate a climate of anxiety, of uncertainty, to project an image abroad of a destabilized Mexico.'' 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. 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. Mr. Schwartz 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.
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