IMPLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY

Listserv address: To subscribe to the list, send an e-mail message to majordomo@igc.apc.org with "subscribe hrw-news" in the body of the message (leave the subject line blank).

Human Rights Watch/Americas is grateful to the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee for providing funding that enabled Solomon to conduct research in Mexico and permitted the production of the report. We are also deeply indebted to Marina Kaufman, a member of the Human Rights Watch/Americas Advisory Committee, who donated funds for this project and has consistently supported the division's work with her insight and time.

We are grateful to the Mexican organizations that facilitated our work in Chiapas. The Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center (Centro de Derechos Humanos "Fray Bartolomé de las Casas," CDHFBC) helped to arrange travel to violence-torn areas and accompanied us on some trips. The center also assisted by providing information on human rights cases. A report published by the center in October 1996, Neither Peace Nor Justice (Ni Paz Ni Justicia), which details many aspects of the violence in northern Chiapas, is an important document for understanding the region. While we were in Chiapas, the Coordinating Group of Non-governmental Organizations for Peace (Coordinadora de Organismos No Gubernamentales por la Paz, CONPAZ) provided valuable assistance through sharing information from many of the human rights cases it handles in Chiapas courts. We also thank CONPAZ for allowing us to review a draft of a paper analyzing the administration of justice in Chiapas, which it was preparing for publication as our report went to press.

In Mexico City, we remain indebted to the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (Centro de Derechos Humanos "Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez," PRODH), whose support while we were in Mexico, and afterward, was crucial. We thank the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights (Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos, CMDPDH) for their valuable feedback on Chiapas.

We would like to thank Eric Olson and Clifford Rohde for their valuable observations on this report. We also offer our thanks to the Inter-Hemispheric Education Resource Center for permitting us to reproduce the outline of the map of Mexico and to the Fray Bartolomé Human Rights Center and CONPAZ for permission to reproduce the outline of the map of Chiapas.

CDHFBC Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center (Centro de Derechos Humanos "Fray Bartolomé de las Casas")

CEDIAC Center for Indigenous Rights (Centro de Derechos Indígenas)

CEOIC State Council of Indigenous and Peasant Organizations (Consejo Estatal de Organizaciones Indígenas y Campesinas)

CIOAC Independent Union of Agricultural Workers and Peasants (Central Independiente de Obreros Agrícolas y Campesinos)

CNC National Confederation of Peasants (Confederación Nacional de Campesinos)

CNDH National Human Rights Commission (Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos)

CONFRATERNICE National Brotherhood of Evangelical Christian Churches (Confraternidad Nacional de Iglesias Cristianas Evangélicas)

CONPAZ Coordinating Group of Non-governmental Organizations for Peace (Coordinadora de Organismos No Gubernamentales por la Paz)

EPR Popular Revolutionary Army (Ejército Popular Revolucionario)

EZLN Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional)

ICCPR International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

OCEZ Emiliano Zapata Peasant Organization (Organización Campesina Emiliano Zapata)

PGJE Office of the State Attorney General (Procuraduría General de Justicia del Estado)

PGR Office of the Federal Attorney General (Procuraduría General de la República)

PRD Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Democrática)

PRI Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional)

PRODH Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center

(Centro de Derechos Humanos "Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez")

Though Mexico now grapples with political, economic, and legal reforms, it has failed to focus much-needed attention on human rights violations. If the administration of President Ernesto Zedillo is to end Mexico's longstanding abdication of its international human rights obligations, however, the government must place the protection of human rights squarely on its agenda of reform. Nowhere is such attention more urgently needed than in Mexico's rural areas, where violent conflict stemming from political and religious differences, counterinsurgency, and disputes over land and other community resources leads to serious and widespread human rights violations.

This report examines the Mexican government's role in and responsibility for rural violence. In many instances, private citizens, not government officials, carried out the assassinations, abductions, threats, and expulsions documented in this report. In others, Mexican government authorities participated directly in abuses. However, even when private citizens alone were involved, officials often facilitated their abusive acts, failed to prosecute the perpetrators, or appeared to use the judicial system to achieve partisan goals. Given authorities' knowledge of abuses, responsibility to stop them, and obligation to apprehend and prosecute aggressors, the government's involvement in attacks by private citizens is nothing short of willful negligence and complicity.

The report focuses on the southern state of Chiapas, where, since 1995, rural violence in the state's troubled northern region alone has led to the forced displacement of almost 4,000 people and dozens of confrontations in which lives were lost. It also analyzes cases from Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Sinaloa states, because rural violence is a national problem, and the patterns documented in Chiapas appear around the country. At least five patterns can be seen nationally:

· Government officials fail to confront local power brokers, known as caciques, who support the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI), even when their influence over police and judicial officials leads to abuses. These problems can have deadly consequences when caciques arm civilians to defend their interests.

· Federal, state, and local authorities often deny that human rights problems exist, even in the most blatant cases. The rare occasions in which action has been taken against government officials or supporters are exceptions that prove the rule. They show that action can be taken if the political will is thereto do so, but that such will is only mustered after intense local, national, and international pressure is brought to bear.

· Impunity remains the norm for human rights violators and supporters of the government. This applies to violent acts committed by private citizens in rural Mexico as well as to civilian and military officials who have committed abuses in the name of fighting guerrillas.

· Violent actions are not the exclusive domain of supporters of the PRI; partisans of the PRI have also suffered attacks by their opponents, including murders and expulsions. Human Rights Watch/Americas condemns with equal vigor abuses committed in the name of any political or religious belief. Frequently, however, attacks against the police or members of the PRI are prosecuted vigorously or improperly, in contrast to crimes committed by PRI supporters, which often go unpunished.

· Federal and state judicial officials often fail to fulfill their responsibility to ensure that victims of rural violence have access to effective judicial remedies, whether the aggressors are government officials or private citizens.

These problems are not new to Mexico, but Mexico may currently possess a unique opportunity to confront them. The Mexican government has promoted economic, political, and legal reforms in the past, but the Zedillo administration is overseeing some of the most profound changes in Mexico since the ruling party gained power seven decades ago. These changes, however, have coincided with growing instability in Mexico, stemming from economic crisis, at least two active guerrilla groups, a burgeoning illegal drug trade, and caciques vying to retain power in a time of political change. Further, political movements opposed to the PRI have increasingly contested local, state-wide, and federal elections, making the long-unchallenged control exercised by the PRI ever more precarious.

The government must take the opportunity presented by its agenda of reform to implement meaningful measures to end human rights violations and promote the rule of law. Instability will likely lead to greater violence if the state does not respond to it in accordance with human rights norms. In addition, the government will run the risk of further alienating citizens who have little faith that their conflicts can be successfully and peacefully mediated through government institutions. The human rights problems documented in this report rarely lendthemselves to easy solutions, but the government's efforts to resolve them will speak volumes about the seriousness of its concern for human rights.

Rural Violence in Chiapas

This report analyzes cases in three subregions of Chiapas state, outside the zone where rebels of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) operate. The armed conflict, which erupted on January 1, 1994, has exacerbated tensions throughout the state, but the human rights violations documented here are not those of counterinsurgency alone. In fact, rural violence has been less acute in the area where the government and EZLN face off. Rather, the emergence of the EZLN changed longstanding political dynamics, forcing state and federal authorities to cede political space to the guerrillas and their supporters. As peasants increasingly occupied farms and municipal buildings, and the opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Democrática, PRD) gained in local elections, the battle lines of political power were redrawn.

No single factor suffices to explain the cause of the violence and human rights abuses that this report documents in Chiapas. Politics, religion, land, and counterinsurgency were often at their root, but, frequently, conflict stemmed from more than one of these elements. Human Rights Watch/Americas field research suggests the troubling possibility that, even as some people within the state government expend energy to negotiate community-by-community solutions to conflicts, other government officials capitalize on or manipulate conflicts to promote their own political or counterinsurgency goals, or they divert their attention in the interests of powerful landowners.

For decades, "white guards" (guardias blancas) have operated in Chiapas. These hired guns, paid by caciques, protect private property and the political machinery controlled by the PRI. Unlike a formal private security group, they are not accountable for their actions. In fact, the government of Chiapas denies they exist, despite conclusive evidence that they remain active and at times work in coordination with police. By so plainly acquiescing to the violent actions of white guards, and failing to prosecute the perpetrators, authorities become complicit in those abuses.

In Chiapas, however, a new set of armed groups has emerged, quite distinct from white guards in their make-up, visibility, and agenda. They are groups of civilians united in above-ground, peasant-based organizations that employ violence to retain or win political or economic power. We refer to them as "armed groups"because weapons are used in some of their violent attacks. It appears, however, that most members of these groups are not armed or trained to use arms.

One such association, named Peace and Justice (Paz y Justicia), became active in 1995, expelling the PRI's opponents from rural communities and carrying out other attacks, such as regulating the passage of its enemies on public roads. Unlike white guards, however, which owe their allegiance to economic and political elites and whose victims have tended to come from the disenfranchised, indigenous population, both the members and victims of Peace and Justice come from the same sector of society: the state's poverty-stricken Ch'ol ethnic group.

Human Rights Watch/Americas field research confirmed widespread violent actions by Peace and Justice. For instance, Peace and Justice abducted PRD supporters from Nuevo Limar, Tila municipality, in September 1995 and took them to the police. Rather than take action against the aggressors, who had kidnapped the supporters of the PRD, the police held the victims for several hours, while the army interrogated one accused of being a guerrilla, then released them without charge. The local prosecutor took no action when the PRD members complained. Then, in August 1996, Peace and Justice members from surrounding communities gathered in Nuevo Limar to expel the same people harassed earlier, forcing six families that supported the PRD to flee and seek refuge in neighboring Salto de Agua municipality.

Peace and Justice members in the nearby community of Miguel Alemán have maintained a siege of the neighboring community of Masojá Shucjá since June 1996, blocking its residents from entering or leaving. In July 1996, residents of Miguel Alemán pulled three Masojá Shucjá men from their vehicles as they passed Miguel Alemán, even though the men had joined a police and military convoy for protection. One of the men remains missing. The two others were taken by police to a nearby station, where, almost immediately, PRI supporters showed up to denounce their alleged involvement in an unrelated murder case in which the men had never been mentioned before. At best, this case demonstrates the astonishing speed at which the justice system works against perceived opponents of the PRI; at worst, it shows how the system is easily manipulated by PRI supporters.

Given Peace and Justice's control of the road between Miguel Alemán and Masojá Shucjá, Human Rights Watch/Americas traveled to Masojá Shucjá only after obtaining state government support to do so. While our fact-finding team gathered testimonies, the army general who then commanded a nearby base deployed his troops throughout the community, intimidating witnesses. After we left Masojá Shucjá, Peace and Justice members detained our delegation in Miguel Alemán, despite our police escort. We were harassed and threatened, and a tire ofour vehicle was slashed. We were permitted to leave only after a high-ranking state government official, accompanied by the municipal president, arrived to negotiate our release.

Leaders of Peace and Justice explain that they formed because the state was incapable of blocking the onslaught of what they saw as the EZLN's proxies - the San Cristóbal de las Casas-based Catholic Church, the PRD, and the many organizations composed of indigenous men and women that had become increasingly strong since the 1970s. Consistent with testimony gathered by Human Rights Watch/Americas from the victims of attacks, state leaders of the PRI explained that Peace and Justice coordinates the members of various communities to defend against their enemies. They insist, however, that they work only in self-defense.

Conflict in northern Chiapas is not one-sided, and members and supporters of the PRI have reason to fear for their safety. Human Rights Watch/Americas interviewed partisans of the PRI who were forced to flee their communities and whose friends and family were murdered. While violence against them is real, their explanation of who carried out the attacks - the church and the PRD - does not accord with information gathered by Human Rights Watch/Americas. While clearly some groups or individuals target members of the PRI, we uncovered no evidence of institutional links to above-ground groups such as the church and the PRD.

Just south of the area where Peace and Justice operates, Human Rights Watch/Americas documented the activities of the Chinchulines, a group of hardline PRI supporters in San Jerónimo de Bachajón, a large ejido, or collective community, in Chilón municipality. The group furthers the political agenda of the PRI, at least locally and state-wide, while serving its own economic interests. Abuses committed by the Chinchulines for years and denounced by a local, church-sponsored human rights group went unheeded for years.

In May 1996, the Chinchulines went on a rampage, attacking their opponents and the church and driving some one hundred residents into refuge in the state capital of Tuxtla Gutiérrez. They shot and killed two men, set fire to church buildings, and burned homes. Following the attack, the group took on a public-security role, patrolling streets and even maintaining a roadblock at the entrance to the town. Following the attacks, the PRI-controlled state congress cut off funds to the PRD-controlled municipality, arguing that the municipal president was the intellectual author of attacks against the Chinchulines. Only after intense local, national, and international outcry did the state arrest the men accused of being behind the Chinchulines attack. Months later, having succeeded in weakening the municipal government, the congress restored funds to the municipality; themunicipal president was never even questioned by judicial authorities regarding the accusation used to justify cutting off the funds.

As in northern Chiapas, the conflict in Chilón municipality was not one-sided. The attack by the Chinchulines was touched off by the murder of the head of the group, who had harassed the pro-PRD victors in elections for ejido authorities just before the May 1996 confrontation.

Finally, this report details violence in Venustiano Carranza municipality, to the southeast of Chilón. There, longstanding land conflicts have boiled over into armed confrontations between contending parties, but police and prosecutors have acted only against the opponents of the PRI. In July 1996, police and members of a PRI group acted jointly to arrest opponents of the PRI, leading to the death of one man and the arbitrary detention of others.

Though many of the conflicts documented here are based on struggles for political power, an explicitly religious element is also present in many cases. The issue of religion alone, however, does not explain why certain members of the religious community have been targeted. Indeed, many Catholics and Protestants are identified by their opposition to long-established political power structures, posing a threat to political privilege and the economic benefits associated with it. The relationship between politics and religion in Chiapas shifts from region to region, so there is no clearly identifiable state-wide relationship between religious affiliation and political loyalty.

Attacks against the Catholic Church are based on the perceived political role of the church, not motivated by the persecution of adherents of an unpopular religion. The liberation theology of the region's Catholic bishop, Samuel Ruiz, has led to conflict with traditional power holders for decades, but conflict became particularly sharp after January 1994. The Catholic Church is vilified by Peace and Justice, which accuses priests of arming the PRI's opponents and promoting land invasions, a point of view shared by some Chiapas state government officials. The result has been a series of threats against and assaults on clergy and lay Catholic workers, physical attacks on church properties, and the expulsion from Mexico of foreign priests viewed by the government as too radical.

The state's large Protestant population has also come under attack from private citizens and local politicians. At least 15,000 have been expelled from their homes in San Juan Chamula municipality since the early 1970s, while local officials participated in expulsions and the state government sat idly by. In recent years, violence against Protestants has tapered off, though not ended, but other problems have arisen, like prohibitions on Protestant children attending school. State judicialauthorities have failed to move forward on cases in which Protestants have been victimized.

The Chiapas State Response to Violence

In many rural violence cases, the government of Chiapas fails to provide adequate judicial remedy to those who seek it, in violation of international law that imposes upon the state the affirmative obligation to ensure that all people under its jurisdiction have access to effective judicial remedies. Further, this report documents several troubling cases in which Chiapas state authorities used the justice system punitively against their real or perceived opponents, violating international standards on fair judicial processes. Human Rights Watch/Americas is deeply troubled by the fact that in many cases where such problems were documented, authorities appear to have acted with political or religious motivations, signaling what may be a pattern of discriminatory application of justice.

Human Rights Watch/Americas independently investigated several cases in which real or imagined opponents of the PRI were jailed, finding evidence of serious problems: the two men from Masojá Shucjá who were pulled from their cars and ended up in jail for murder, apparently to pacify an angry crowd; a man from Jolnixtié, Tila municipality, arbitrarily detained by soldiers in a community where PRI supporters had been killed; and a case in which officials appeared so eager to take action against foreign and local priests that moments after they obtained accusations against them they flew over the alleged crime scene in a helicopter to fulfill their duty to inspect the site, then expelled the foreign clergy the next day without even minimal due process. As this report went to press, state officials detained four men in Palenque municipality, two of them Jesuit priests, denied them basic due process guarantees, appeared to fabricate evidence, and charged them with murder. They were released several days later by a judge who ruled that prosecutors had failed to present sufficient evidence against the accused. While the incident demonstrated that the court acted properly in this case, it also highlighted the fact that prosecutors violated human rights in detaining the men and lodged charges against them with no apparent reason other than a desire to punish them for their perceived political beliefs.

The PRD has made judicial review of the cases of at least nineteen detainees from Chilón and northern Chiapas a condition for talks with the PRI on regional violence. The detainees, according to the PRD, were jailed without having the chance to offer evidence in their favor. In a positive move, the state governmentagreed in November 1996 to investigate these cases. In the first set reviewed, it found information that led to the release of at least five men.

Human Rights Watch/Americas is encouraged by the state government's willingness to review cases of people who may have been wrongly jailed. However, the review came about as a result of political pressure from detainees on hunger strike, not a clearly defined judicial process equally accessible to all. While the cases documented here indicate that political will is necessary for Mexico to confront adequately its human rights problem, the goal should be for the Mexican judicial system to function smoothly to protect human rights without the need for pressure to be exercised.

The state government appears to be acting contradictorily to handle violence in northern Chiapas. While complicity and negligence have kept state officials from taking action against the PRI's violent supporters, the state government has simultaneously undertaken initiatives to negotiate non-aggression pacts and the return of internally displaced people from many communities, at the same time that it has provided material support for conflicted areas. Indeed, some 2,000 people have returned to their homes since early 1995, though leaders from both the PRI and PRD criticize the government for failing to address the underlying problems that led to the expulsions.

Regional Problems, National Patterns

If the government is to promote greater respect for human rights, urgent attention must be paid to violence and the government's response to it around the country. For this reason, Human Rights Watch/Americas includes in this report cases from Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Sinaloa states.

Based on field research in Guerrero state, this report finds that impunity remains a serious problem in cases in which opponents of the PRI come under attack. The report analyzes a series of recent murders of PRD activists in Guerrero's Tlacoachistlahuaca municipality, concluding that the state government has failed to take appropriate action to resolve the cases. In Oaxaca, this report documents rural violence and the state's inadequate response, while in Sinaloa, the report discusses human rights violations committed in the name of fighting crime.

Tensions in Guerrero rose sharply in June 1996, when a new and well-armed guerrilla group appeared publicly for the first time in Aguas Blancas, the site of a 1995 police massacre of peasants. Two months later, the group - the Popular Revolutionary Army (Ejército Popular Revolucionario, EPR) - carried out coordinated attacks in six states. Throughout Guerrero, the army responded by setting up roadblocks and pressing the civilian population for information onanyone deemed suspicious. For their part, prosecutors set to work on above-ground peasant organizations thought to be linked to the EPR. Activists have been detained regularly, and, according to reports, many have been tortured. These problems have also been played out in other Mexican states where the EPR is active, particularly in Oaxaca.

The solution to Mexico's violence problem is not to shore up a strong, repressive central government. The human rights violations that have accompanied just such a system are all too evident. Rather, Mexico's federal and state governments must reject business-as-usual politics based on the abusive relationships of local power bosses, ensure the politically neutral application of justice, and prosecute human rights violators. Though many of the abuses documented here fall under state-level jurisdiction, international law holds the national government of federal systems like Mexico's responsible for the observance of human rights in the states that make up the federal system.

To his credit, President Ernesto Zedillo has recognized deficiencies in the rule of law in Mexico, as have the country's immediate past and current attorneys general. Translating recognition into correction, however, will require the government at all levels to take unambiguous steps toward that goal.

Recommendations

To the Federal Government of Mexico:

· The Mexican government should adopt an aggressive policy toward stemming human rights violations in rural Mexico, even in cases that fall under state jurisdiction. Violations in the states should be identified and publicly condemned by federal officials, who should encourage their state counterparts to take appropriate action to end abuses and punish those responsible for them. Measures should be established to facilitate federal oversight of and judicial action on state-level human rights violations.

· Given that the Chiapas state government has shown itself unwilling to recognize the human rights implications of the actions of armed groups in the state, the federal government should convene an independent task force to investigate human rights violations committed in rural Chiapas. The task force should be instructed to focus on ways in which a similar federal approach to stemming rural human rights violations could be applied to other states.

· The government of Mexico must prosecute human rights violators, ending the pattern of impunity.

· The government must approach the EPR with strict respect for the law. The government should conduct an exhaustive investigation into allegations made by local human rights organizations about the systematic commission of abuses that has taken place in the name of combating the armed group. Human Rights Watch/Americas recognizes the Mexican government's legitimate role in putting down armed insurrection, but notes that such efforts must be carried out in accordance with human rights law.

· The federal government should withdraw its reservations to international human rights treaties regarding the expulsion of foreigners without due process.

To the Federal Chamber of Deputies:

· Mexico's federal Chamber of Deputies should gather information on human rights violations in rural Mexico and use its authority to hold government officials responsible for abuses. For instance, information gathered by the Chamber of Deputies during an October 1995 fact-finding trip to northern Chiapas state should be made public and used to hold the state government accountable for human rights violations in the region.

To the Chiapas State Government:

· The state government should back the reconciliation program of its Ministry of Government with actions that will demonstrate the impartial application of justice and the impartial use of security forces. Action must be taken to ensure that representatives of the Office of the State Attorney General circulate widely throughout conflictive communities to gather testimonies of human rights violations and open cases swiftly and without regard for the political or religious affiliation of the victims.

· The government of Chiapas should publicly condemn armed civilians who engage in politically or religiously motivated violence, including white guards, Peace and Justice, the Chinchulines, and members of opposition groups.

· The government of Chiapas should take appropriate judicial action against members of Peace and Justice who have committed violent crimes. Given significant evidence to suggest that the group's activities are coordinated and designed to strike against opponents of the PRI, a study of the possible criminal nature of the organization should be carried out.

· The government of Chiapas should take judicial action against police officials who tolerated or facilitated the participation of white guards in police actions against protestors in Chicomuselo, Palenque, and other municipalities in 1994 and 1995. Similarly, the government should take appropriate administrative or criminal action against officials who have contributed to unwarranted delays in bringing these police officials to justice.

· State officials should undertake an investigation into the potential existence of political or religious discrimination in the application of justice. Anyone found guilty of wrongdoing should be punished according to the law.

· Human Rights Watch/Americas encourages state officials to continue their drive to examine questionable detentions in Chiapas. Appropriate administrative or criminal action should be taken against those prosecutors found to have acted improperly in the gathering of evidence and filing of criminal charges, acted partially against members of political parties opposing the PRI, or violated other due process precepts.

· The government of Chiapas should investigate the activities of local public security police detachments - including but not limited to those in Tila, Chilón, and Venustiano Carranza municipalities - to document cases in which police acted improperly to facilitate abuses committed by civilian armed groups. Appropriate administrative or criminal action should be taken against officers found guilty of wrongdoing.

· The government of Chiapas must immediately ensure that freedom of travel is restored in communities currently blocked by Peace and Justice, including Masojá Shucjá in Tila municipality. Judicial action should be taken against those civilians responsible for impeding freedom of movement and those officials who have failed to ensure that this right is respected.

· State judicial officials should move forward on cases of Protestants expelled from their communities or prohibited from attending school, prosecuting those found responsible for the abuses. Officials found guilty of failing to act properly to prosecute the cases should be subjected to appropriate administrative or criminal action.

To Political Parties Contending for Power in Chiapas:

· Human Rights Watch/Americas calls on all political parties to issue clear, strong, and public directives to their followers that the use of violence will not be tolerated or supported. Internal investigations should take place within all political parties to find and discipline the promoters of and participants in violent actions.

To the Government of the United States:

· The government of the United States should press the Mexican government to end impunity in Chiapas and elsewhere in Mexico.

· As the U.S. and Mexican governments build greater ties between law enforcement officials, the United States should use its increasing leverage to ensure that Mexico works actively to eliminate human rights problems. The United States should condition security aid to Mexico on concrete human rights goals regarding the investigation and prosecution of human rights violators.

· U.S. Embassy and State Department officials should continue to extend their contact with Mexican human rights organizations, which has contributed to supporting the human rights movement in Mexico.

· Until the Mexican army adequately investigates gross violations of human rights committed during combat with the EZLN in January 1994, and prosecutes those responsible, the U.S. government should withhold all aid to the Mexican military, including the provision of helicopters.

To the European Union:

· The Council of the European Union should scrutinize Mexico's human rights record as it discusses with Mexico a new political, cooperation, and trade agreement. The council should adopt a resolution calling on the Mexican government to ensure that the federal and state governments vigorously prosecute human rights violators.

· During negotiations with Mexico for the new cooperation agreement, the European Commission should give prominence to human rights concerns in Mexico. Representatives of the European Commission in Mexico should coordinate with European Union member states toward this end. The commission should continue to support local nongovernmental human rights organizations. Toward these ends, the commission should appoint a human rights officer in its permanent delegation in Mexico.

· Given the consistent pattern of violations of human rights in Mexico, we urge the European Parliament to request that the European Commission submit an annual report on the situation of human rights in Mexico. In addition, the European Parliament should monitor discussions between the Council of the European Union and Mexico on the political, cooperation, and trade agreement, underscoring the need for Mexico to take concrete steps toward greater respect for human rights.

This report documents numerous violations of international human rights standards, primarily those contained in the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Mexico is bound by both agreements.1

Human Rights Watch/Americas analyzes violations of these standards that came about as a result of direct actions of government officials, such as torture and arbitrary detentions. This report also documents human rights violations that resulted from the Mexican government's failure to take measures mandated by the ACHR and ICCPR. These latter abuses came about, for instance, as a result of authorities' willful negligence in confronting the pro-government perpetrators of violence or officials' failure to provide effective judicial remedies for the victims of attacks, whether the aggressors were government officials or private citizens.

Responsibility to Ensure the Full Exercise of Human Rights

For Mexico to comply with its international human rights obligations, it is not enough for officials to refrain from torturing, arbitrarily detaining, or otherwise abusing those under their jurisdiction. The government must also take affirmative steps to ensure that all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction are able to enjoy the rights embodied in the ACHR and the ICCPR.2 For example, Mexico violates this standard when authorities knowingly take no action against individuals who illegally regulate the passage of their opponents on public roads,3threaten or physically attack their adversaries, expel their perceived enemies from rural communities, or impede the observation of religious beliefs.4

The cases documented in this report make amply clear that authorities cannot argue that they have not taken action because they did not know of the crimes committed by private citizens. Rather, by systematically turning a blind eye toward such attacks, local officials become actively complicit in them.

Federal Responsibility for State-level Abuses

Mexico's federal government is responsible for ensuring the promotion and protection of human rights within the country, regardless of whether the

authorities responsible for abuses are federal or state officials or private individuals action with the tolerance or acquiescence of authorities.5 Therefore, even though state-level authorities, including police and prosecutors, were involved in different ways in most of the abuses documented in this report, the Zedillo administration cannotinvoke Mexico's federal system of government to justify failing to act in cases where violations were committed by state-level agents.

Mexico is not the only country in the hemisphere to face the issue of how a federal government should handle state-level human rights violations. Argentina and Brazil have taken steps to assert federal authority over abusive state police. In the United States, the federal government has assumed human rights responsibility over states that are unwilling or unable to ensure the protection of human rights.6

The Right to Judicial Protection

International human rights standards require Mexico to ensure that all those who need and seek protection from the judicial system receive it.7 When crimes of rural violence are reported to prosecutors or police, they must act to ensure that justice is done without discrimination. Consequently, authorities violate Mexico's international obligations when they refuse to investigate fully denunciations made by people perceived as government opponents or fail to move cases through the judicial system when the victims of abuse are seen as government opponents.

Due Process Guarantees

Mexico is bound by the ACHR and ICCPR to provide due process guarantees to protect the rights of people suspected or accused by the state of having committed a crime.8 This obligation is violated when prosecutors use the judicial system punitively against perceived opponents of the government or take arbitrary actions against such individuals.

The Right to Equal Protection

International human rights law not only requires that Mexican authorities guarantee judicial protection to victims of crimes, it establishes Mexico's obligation to provide judicial remedies equally to all individuals under the state'sjurisdiction, without discrimination based on such factors as political or religious affiliation.9

Human Rights Watch/Americas is deeply troubled by the findings of this report, which show that in multiple cases officials appear to have acted out of partisan support for the ruling party or against members of evangelical denominations. Officials repeatedly failed to take appropriate measures to ensure the rights of people perceived as opponents of the government, for instance, while moving swiftly and often questionably or illegally to prosecute government adversaries. At the same time, officials routinely turned a blind eye toward abuses committed by government supporters. The government cannot argue that the justice system simply functions poorly, since in several cases documented in this report prosecutors and police moved swiftly to investigate and prosecute real or perceived government opponents who were accused of having committed a crime.

To evaluate further the distressing implication that a pattern of violations of equal rights standards exists in Chiapas, Human Rights Watch/Americas sought rural violence cases in which supporters of the government were treated the same as its opponents. Other than the well-publicized case of the detention of the Chinchulines in Chilón municipality, documented below, Congressman Samuel Sánchez Sánchez, a PRI state legislator from northern Chiapas, was unaware of any cases of PRI supporters in jail for acts of rural violence.10 Chiapas state Director General of Government Mario Arturo Coutiño told Human Rights Watch/Americas that such cases did exist, though he did not provide any specific examples. Further, Coutiño insisted that the PRI did not call attention to these cases because the party accepted the guilt of its partisans in the instances for which they had beenprosecuted and jailed.11 Human Rights Watch/Americas is unaware of allegations of irregularities in cases in which government supporters may have been detained.

Throughout this report, Human Rights Watch/Americas calls attention to cases that bolster our concern about equal protection standards in Chiapas. We recommend that Mexican authorities undertake a thorough evaluation of this concern.

International Prohibition of Torture, "Disappearance," and Arbitrary Detention

This report documents cases of torture, "disappearance," and arbitrary detention, which are strictly prohibited under international law.12 Some of these abuses took place during incidents of rural violence involving both government officials and private citizens. In some cases they came about in the context of the government's fight against leftist guerrillas.

The United Nations Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance lays out the violations committed by governments that practice "disappearances." It reads, "It constitutes a violation of the rules of international law guaranteeing, inter alia, the right to recognition as a person before the law, the right to liberty and security of the person and the right not to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment orpunishment."13 Often, "disappearances" facilitate other human rights violations, including torture and extrajudicial execution.

Mexican Reservations to International Human Rights Standards Regarding the Expulsion of Foreigners

The Mexican government formulated reservations to certain provisions of three treaties that guarantee due process to foreigners prior to expulsion, thereby signaling that its observation of the reserved human rights standards would be limited. Related to the cases in this report, the Mexican government formulated reservations to the ICCPR, ACHR, and the 1928 Convention on the Status of Foreigners.14

Mexico's reservations to these treaties stipulate that the expulsion of foreigners will take place according to domestic law, a reference to Article 33 of the Mexican Constitution, which allows the executive branch of government to "force to leave national territory, immediately and without necessity of prior legal process, all foreigners whose stay in the country it deems undesirable." By doing so, the government retained the authority to expel foreigners summarily, which is what it did to three foreign priests in 1995, as documented below.

The federal National Human Rights Commission (Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos, CNDH) has argued strongly that these reservations should be withdrawn, noting that they "not only clash with the most elemental principles of justice, but also contradict values and norms that are universally accepted regardingthe promotion, protection, and defense of human rights."15 Human Rights Watch/Americas must agree, finding the government's expulsion of the priests without due process a clear violation of the ends and purpose of international human rights standards on the subject and an indication that the government of Mexico places political expediency over due process guarantees.

Crime, Rural Violence, and the Breakdown of the Mexican Justice System

From the arbitrary detention of suspected guerrillas in the southern, poverty-stricken state of Guerrero to the "disappearance" of suspected criminals in northern Mexico's prosperous agricultural state of Sinaloa, rural human rights violations are a national problem. Some of these abuses are political in nature, but others come about as a response to burgeoning crime.

The cases highlighted below - from Sinaloa, Guerrero, and Oaxaca states - demonstrate the varied causes of human rights violations nationally, but they contain a common denominator: the justice system fails to function properly. This, too, is the lesson from the Chiapas cases that form the bulk of this report.

In several cases documented in this report, including the Aguas Blancas massacre and the Chinchulines rampage, certain government officials or supporters who committed human rights violations have been brought to justice. These cases showed three characteristics in common: a blatant violation of the law; official denials; and local and international outrage, prompting action. In effect, they were exceptions that proved the rule: justice can be done, but political will is necessary. In far too many cases, violations are denied or simply go unpunished.

Shortly after assuming his current position in December 1996, Attorney General Jorge Madrazo Cuéllar noted,

Regarding formal justice, it must be recognized that during the last two decades, at least, unwarranted delays and insufficiencies have accumulated, to which new elements have been added that have exacerbated the problem. Ministerial mistakes and even crimes committed by public servants engaged in carrying out relevant investigations have greatly contributed to the deepening of this crisis, which is felt in the notable loss of credibility within society related to the work of securing justice.16

Earlier, when ordering that all Federal Judicial Police undergo human rights training, Madrazo commented, "The challenge of overcoming the crisis ofcredibility related to the securing of justice begins with putting our own house in order."17

Achieving this goal will not be easy. The problems are complex, mixing local political interests with state or national institutions. Madrazo has promised to prosecute any of the employees of the Office of the Federal Attorney General who violate human rights. A positive initiative, it is too soon to know how much success he will have. And as positive as federal initiatives may be, measures are also needed to tackle state-level problems, since state judiciaries function independently from the federal system.

The lack of will to end abuses and impunity is part and parcel of Mexico's political system. Occupying the presidential palace for the last seventy years, the PRI or its predecessors have employed a complex system of cooptation and coercion to maintain control. This corporatist system hinges on the maintenance of centralized political authority. The justice system has shown the tendency to function smoothly and swiftly - if not always in accord with human rights standards - when punishing opponents of the government, but slowly, if at all, when government supporters are to be brought to task. As a result, political negotiation, not reliance on the legal system, has been the method preferred for resolving conflicts.

Today in Mexico, profound political and economic change is the order of the day, shaking the very foundation of the country's corporatist society.18 As a result, the regional power bosses known as caciques have been left increasingly on their own to fend for themselves.19 Nowhere is this more clear than in rural Mexico. As Mexico struggles to introduce democratic reforms, we can expect greater human rights violations stemming from the actions of caciques fighting to maintain theirprivileges. Political dangers, like a well-organized opposition, or serious criminal threats, like kidnappers, may increasingly be dealt with outside the law. Ironically, if the cases documented in this report are any indication, it will often be the institutions and people responsible for upholding the law who act outside the law. This tension will be exacerbated by growing political demands stemming from increased opposition organization and federal-government rhetoric in support of democracy.

Human Rights Violations and Impunity in Guerrero State

Rural violence in Guerrero claimed international headlines after police opened fire on peasants in Aguas Blancas, Coyuca de Benítez municipality, on June 28, 1995, killing seventeen and wounding twenty-three.20 Though this case became exceptionally well known, political disputes, drugs, and crime have led to rural violence for years in Guerrero.

In the Aguas Blancas massacre, state authorities were proved to have fabricated evidence of an armed confrontation and to have manipulated a video filmed by the police, however improbably, of the massacre itself. Eventually, authorities fired officials responsible for the police action that led to the massacre, mid- and low-level officers were jailed, and the state's governor resigned.

In March 1996, President Zedillo requested that the Mexican Supreme Court review the Aguas Blancas case, after receiving intense national and international pressure. In its report on the case, the Supreme Court, noting that "it is well known that to sustain a lie you have to continue lying," strongly criticized the state government's attempt to cover up the government's responsibility for the massacre.21 "It is relevant to point out how absurd the declarations of state government officials were, made in their uncontrolled effort to cover up, mislead, and protect [themselves]."22

Rather than fulfill its responsibilities in the case, the Supreme Court found, the state government "acted as a clique holding power that it had to protect, even when it implied hiding the truth and protecting those responsible."23 The court determined that the highest-ranking members of the state government at the time were responsible for the massacre, including Rubén Figueroa Alcocer, the governor; José Rubén Robles Catalán, the secretary general of government; and Antonio Alcocer Salazar, the state attorney general.24 No criminal action was taken against them before or after the publication of the Supreme Court's decision.

The Aguas Blancas massacre followed a long history of rural violence and impunity in Guerrero. In fact, a police official whom the CNDH named as responsible for the Aguas Blancas massacre had been on active duty despite prior CNDH documentation that he had been involved in another violent confrontation with protestors just nine months earlier. Major Manuel Moreno, general operations director of Guerrero's Public Security Police, had overseen a September 1994 crackdown on protestors in the state capital of Chilpancingo, leading the CNDH to recommend that he be suspended pending judicial investigation.25 More than a year later, arrest warrants issued for agents under Moreno's command had yet to be executed.26 No action was taken against Moreno until after the Aguas Blancas massacre.

Political violence has continued since the Aguas Blancas massacre. For instance, Tlacoachistlahuaca, a municipality in southern Guerrero state, has suffered a series of apparently politically motivated murders and impunity, stemming from an electoral dispute. On May 23, 1995, PRD supporters forced Municipal President Amando Ramos Brito from his office and occupied themunicipal building until December 16 of that year,27 arguing that they had had enough of Ramos Brito's authoritarian, cacique leadership.

On November 25, 1995, participants in the takeover filed a complaint with the Tlacoachistlahuaca auxiliary Office of the State Attorney General.28 In his statement, PRD member Ignacio García Muñiz provided details on nine incidents in which PRD activists had been threatened with death following the takeover of the municipal building. The statement included the dates and circumstances of the incidents and the names of the accused.29 No action was taken on the denunciations, according to PRD activist Lauro García Vásquez, who participated in the city hall occupation.30

Eight people claimed by the PRD as party militants, many of whom participated in the takeover, had been murdered prior to the November 25 denunciation. Three were killed after the complaint was filed. In only one of the cases has the government issued an arrest warrant, related to the June 18, 1995 murder of Rey Flores Hernández, from the community of La Trinidad. PRD activists encountered the accused in April, abducted him and eight people he was with, and turned them over to the police after holding them illegally in April 1996. The accused, Francisco Mendoza Hernández, was later released without charge.

Judicial authorities from the state attorney general to the Tlacoachistlahuaca-based auxiliary agent of the Office of the State Attorney General complain that witnesses have not cooperated. "They haven't wanted to support us," Attorney General Antonio Hernández told Human Rights Watch/Americas, complaining that PRD activists who promised to bring witnesses to designated locations to be interviewed "left us high and dry."31 PRD activists complain that it is not up to them to do the work of the Office of the State Attorney General. Case documents reviewed in several of the killings indicated that partial work had been done onmost of the murder cases, but that, often, simple leg-work remained to be done.32 By the time this report went to press, no one had been detained for any of the murders.

Since the appearance of the EPR in June 1996, according to Mexican human rights groups, the army and civilian authorities have cracked down on organizations believed to be linked to the EPR, leading to a witch hunt that Mexican human rights groups have said is characterized by a series of abuses, "such as arbitrary detentions, illegal searches, threats, torture, kidnappings, and a climate of terror and insecurity is some communities."33

Estación Naranjo, Sinaloa State: Human Rights Violations in Fighting Crime Police, too, often disregard the law in the name of fighting crime. In rural Sinaloa state, for example, Human Rights Watch/Americas documented the temporary "disappearance" of two women accused of participating in a kidnapping. According to the victims' family, their home had been under surveillance by people in unmarked vehicles for several days before the February 28, 1996 attack. At approximately 3:00 in the morning, men identifying themselves as members of the State Judicial Police woke the family members and forced them to hand over sisters Margarita and Berta Alicia Alvarado Bon. "Five men entered the house," a third sister, Alejandra Alvarado Bon, told Human Rights Watch/Americas. "They asked all our names, then took Berta and Margarita, who didn't even have time to put on their shoes."34 The sisters were taken away in a grey Suburban with license plates from neighboring Sonora state.

That night, Alejandra Alvarado Bon searched for her sisters at the local police station, to no avail. The following day, she filed a complaint with the localauxiliary agent of the Office of the State Attorney General. Police interviewed by Human Rights Watch/Americas asserted that they had gone in search of the women. "We tried to find the kidnapped girls," one agent insisted.35

On March 4, the auxiliary agent of the Office of the State Attorney General, interviewed by Human Rights Watch/Americas, indicated that she had not been able to gather information on the case because the family members did not come to her and she lacked a car to travel to the home of the "disappeared" sisters,36 a weak excuse since the sisters lived five minutes' walk from the agent's office. The agent did assert, however, that police did not have the sisters in custody. According to Alejandra Alvarado Bon, the auxiliary agent consistently failed to be at her office when family members tried to contact her.

On March 6, when news of the "disappearance" broke in a local newspaper, state judicial police admitted that they had arrested the sisters and turned them over to Sonora state police, who were investigating a kidnapping.

According to the Sinaloa Commission for the Defense of Human Rights (Comisión de Defensa de los Derechos Humanos), which interviewed Berta Alicia Alvarado Bon after her release, the sisters were taken to a hotel and questioned about a recent kidnapping. They were transferred to a private house, where they were kept on February 28 and 29 and March 1 and 2. Margarita Alvarado Bon was beaten. She was charged in connection with the kidnapping, while her sister was released.

In response to questions from Human Rights Watch/Americas, Mexico's Foreign Ministry said that the women had not been "disappeared" and that proper legal procedure had been followed in arresting them.37 The ministry did not respond to follow up questions by Human Rights Watch/Americas regarding the blatant irregularities and abuses committed during the detention, including holding the women incommunicado, threatening and beating Margarita Alvarado Bon, and holding the women at a hotel and private home instead of at government installations.38

Rural Violence in Oaxaca State

As in Guerrero, violence in Oaxaca state has been of serious concern for many years. According to The Violence in Oaxaca (La Violencia en Oaxaca), a report published by the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (Centro de Derechos Humanos "Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez," PRODH), political and religious disputes, the increasing presence of the army since the EZLN launched its first public attacks - presumably to guard against northern expansion of the group - and drug trafficking are the factors that lead to human rights violations there.39 Since the publication of the report in August 1996, the EPR became active in Oaxaca, leading to new problems, according to local human rights groups, including the arbitrary detention and torture of suspected EPR members.

In late 1996, Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights and the Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights published a report on Oaxaca, finding,

Human rights violations pervade Oaxaca, in numerous forms. Oaxacans' right to life, for example, is violated with disturbing frequency. Both the state and national governments have responded principally with ignorance and neglect. Law enforcement rarely brings the killers to trial.40

The hands of state and federal security force agents, including state police and the military, are also sullied with grave human rights violations. Agents of the state are responsible for numerous arbitrary executions, acts of torture, and other mistreatment. Law enforcement officials also possess the notorious tendency to arrest individuals arbitrarily within Oaxaca.41

Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights and the Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights went on to analyze illustrative cases, including the "disappearance" and murder of four men from Ranchería Las Cruces, in the San Miguel Chimalapa ejido. Uniformed public security police detained the men onNovember 1, 1994. Two weeks later, the victims were found dead, each with a bullet to the head and heart. Despite evidence linking specific officers to the weapons used to kill the men, no arrest warrant had been issued by July 1996.42 The report also documented cases of human rights violations committed in the name of fighting common crime. For instance, on June 27, 1996, police detained and tortured Luis Arturo Tiburcio Lázaro, whom they accused of having stolen a car.43

According to the PRODH report, religious freedom has also been limited by government officials, who have taken brutal and blatantly illegal actions against non-Catholics, as they have in Chiapas. PRODH reported, "Cases are common of municipal presidents who hold a position as a religious minister; they oblige non-Catholic community members to renounce their religion and to take religious positions; they are punished with economic fines, the suspension of services, and jail. In extreme cases, their properties are destroyed, the people are expelled or killed."44

The appearance of the EPR has exacerbated rural tensions. Amnesty International has reported several cases of illegal detentions and torture in Oaxaca, including the following:

In one instance, in the early afternoon of 4 September [1996], several members of the Oaxaca state police, the Mexican army and the federal judicial police, raided the home of Evaristo Peralta, a member of the CDIP [People's Defense Committee, Comité de Defense de los Intereses del Pueblo] in the town of Miahutlán, Oaxaca. He was brutally beaten, blindfolded, and carried away in the van to an unknown destination. During his detention he was interrogated about the EPR and threatened with death if he did not cooperate, before being released without charge at 2 pm the following day.45

On September 17, 1996, men kidnapped journalist Razhy González, held him for two days, and beat him while inquiring about a secret EPR press conference he had attended earlier.46 González, editor of the weekly Contrapunto, reported that, given the way in which his captors abducted, frisked, and questioned him, he believes that the assailants were government security officials.47

Background

Competition for Political Power

Intra- and inter-community divisions within Chiapas's rural areas, punctuated by violence, are nothing new in the state. At times exacerbated or manipulated by outside interests seeking political or economic benefit, such divisions have revolved around land, religion, political affiliation, or control over economic resources. The violence in northern Chiapas is the result of longstanding power relationships and radical changes in Chiapas's political and economic landscape in the mid-1990s.

Until very recently, a tight circle of caciques have monopolized political power within Chiapas's municipalities. Caciques became adept at exploiting their profitable relationship with the ruling PRI, working through the state government to fend off land reform in many parts of Chiapas. "Certificates of inalienability" were issued beginning in 1934, allowing ranchers and large landholders to hold onto their property in the face of federal land reform. In exchange for supporting the PRI, local leaders and caciques could expect to enjoy the benefits of federal government largesse and to be able to establish commercial interests that often amounted to monopolies in, for example, food distribution or transportation. Meanwhile, over decades, the PRI coopted indigenous leaders and organizations.

Opposition to the PRI and the cacique system grew in the 1970s, when several peasant organizations were founded. While the federal government continued to interact with the peasant population through the until-then-unchallenged National Confederation of Peasants (Confederación Nacional de Campesinos, CNC, one of the mainstays of the PRI corporatist system), alternative groups proliferated: the Emiliano Zapata Peasant Organization

(Organización Campesina Emiliano Zapata, OCEZ); the Independent Union of Agricultural Workers and Peasants (Central Independiente de Obreros Agrícolas y Campesinos, CIOAC); and the Rural Association of Collective Interest/Union of Unions (Asociación Rural de Interés Colectivo Unión de Uniones, ARIC U de U).

These independent groups organized widely in the 1970s and 1980s, carrying out occupations of farm land throughout the state. In general, however, they failed to break the PRI's stranglehold on political power. Until the EZLN rebellion, scarcely a single municipality had been gained by an opposition party, though the PRD made strides in organization in rural Mexico, to the point in the early 1990s where it posed a significant threat to the PRI in many Chiapas municipalities.

Simultaneously with greater opposition organization, economic conditions in the state changed, throwing people formerly employed in large-scale agriculture out of work and back into subsistence farming.48 These changes led to greater conflict over the ever-scarcer economic benefits derived from positions of authority within communities.

Although the EZLN rebellion of January 1994 directly affected only a relatively small area bordering the Lacandón jungle, the political effects of the conflict were acute in the rest of Chiapas. Within days of the cease-fire announced by President Carlos Salinas de Gortari on January 12, 1994, peasant groups began to denounce PRI local government officials for corruption in municipalities across the state. By May 1994, emboldened protesters had occupied or blockaded municipal presidents' buildings in at least nineteen municipalities.49 Fears of exacerbating the armed conflict led to a more cautious and measured response by the state government to these protests than had been typical in the past.

Umbrella groups like the State Council of Indigenous and Peasant Organizations (Consejo Estatal de Organizaciones Indígenas y Campesinas, CEOIC) were set up to coordinate, on a state-wide basis, the actions of anti-government peasant and Indian organizations. Land occupations took place on an unprecedented scale. By mid-1994, more than 300 farms had been invaded,50 a figure that had jumped to 800 by mid-1996, according to ranchers.51

While federal and state authorities were forced by the EZLN rebellion and international pressure to exercise a tolerance they never before felt bound to practice, the state's still-powerful landowners and farmers felt threatened. During an interview with a local Chiapas newspaper, rancher Jorge Constantino Kanter,identified by some observers as a promoter of white guards,52 put it this way: "It is undeniable that the response [to the EZLN] has been focused only toward the indigenous of the region."53 Regarding armed actions by landowners, Kanter left little doubt: "Now, if what you want to ask me is if landowners have taken action, I tell you `yes.' On more than one occasion the landowners had to organize to defend what belongs to them."

Immediate Origins of the 1995-1996 Violence in Chiapas

Violence in Chiapas became pronounced in 1995 and 1996, as the political opposition, for the first time, decisively breached the PRI's monopoly on local government. Federal and gubernatorial elections in August 1994 reflected the political and societal transformations developing since the 1970s; the PRD gained more votes than the PRI in many municipalities.54 In the gubernatorial vote, the PRI lost in slightly more than one-third of the state's municipalities.55 The governor's vote was termed fraudulent by the PRD and other opposition groups, leading to more municipal actions against the PRI; seven municipalities were occupied in November 1994.56 The state held municipal and state congressional elections on October 15, 1995, leading to renewed political conflict.

As the threat to PRI domination became clearer during the run-up to municipal elections, the press began to refer to a new group called Peace and Justice. According to reports issued by the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human RightsCenter (Centro de Derechos Humanos "Fray Bartolomé de las Casas," CDHFBC), members of this group, accompanied by Public Security Police, attacked and abducted PRD militants and burned dozens of homes in Nuevo Limar on September 4, 1995, prior to the October municipal elections.57 PRI militants in Crucero were alleged to have blocked roads and prevented PRD supporters from voting on election day.58

So-called white guards had for decades worked to protect private property from Indian incursions. Peace and Justice, however, displayed a new characteristic. Its purpose appeared to be the protection of political territory rather than private property.

Opposition political organizing in the 1990s cannot be considered the cause of rural violence any more than acceptance of a one-party political system can be considered an adequate solution to avoiding political tension. Rather, the strengthening of opposition forces led to increasingly strong positions on all sides.

To this political polarization must be added another divisive element: religion. Victims, partisans of the PRD and PRI, state government officials, and members of the clergy all point to the religious element of conflict in Chiapas. Attacks against the Catholic Church stem from the perceived political role played by the church, not from persecution based on religious differences. For instance, PRI politicians blame the Catholic Church for fanning the flames of violence in support of the PRD; some have even accused the church of blessing the arms used to kill members of the PRI. Throughout northern Chiapas, catechists trained by the diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas continue to play an important role in Indian communities.

On the other hand, many Peace and Justice leaders are pastors belonging to evangelical Protestant denominations. As noted by Chiapas state Director General of Government Mario Arturo Coutiño, "There is a fundamental issue that creates crisis. It is the religious element. We are facing a strong religious fundamentalism. The majority of one group of people that supports the PRI - the great majority is evangelical. They are members of the PRI. They are members of Peace and Justice."59

In some communities ejido authorities are drawn from Protestant denominations. Such was the case in Nuevo Limar, in the ejido of El Limar, where the majority of those expelled from the community identified themselves as Catholics. Because of this, the underlying political divisions have the veneer of a religious conflict, and attacks against the opponents of PRI contain an explicitly anti-Catholic theme. In fact, attacks against the Catholic Church have a long history in Chiapas, as elsewhere in Mexico; the revolution that overthrew the dictator Porfirio Díaz in 1911 contained a strong anti-church element, given that the hierarchy of the Catholic Church had been closely associated with Díaz.60 Mexico's 1917 constitution included strong anti-church measures, including prohibitions on church ownership of property and buildings and strict control on the clergy's participation in politics.61 This revolutionary anti-Catholic sentiment contrasts with the current situation in much of Chiapas, where the Catholic Church is viewed by authorities as a force for change, a threat to the status quo.

The Structure of the Administration of Justice in Chiapas

As part of the federal Mexican system, Chiapas shares administration of justice responsibilities with the federal government. The investigation and prosecution of state-level crimes fall under the authority of the Office of the State Attorney General (Procuraduría General de Justicia del Estado, PGJE). In a process known as averiguación previa, or prior investigation, the PGJE is responsible forinvestigating crimes with the assistance of the State Judicial Police. Within the PGJE, the Public Ministry (Ministerio Público) is responsible for overseeing these functions.

When the agent of the Public Ministry within the PGJE finds sufficient evidence to implicate someone in a crime, the file is turned over (consignado) to a judge, who may issue an arrest warrant, in which case the agent of the PGJE can then gather further information on the case, or order further evidence collection. The judge decides if the case is to proceed against the accused and ultimately makes the final decision on the guilt or innocence of the defendant.

The federal justice system, overseen by the Office of the Federal Attorney General (Procuraduría General de la República, PGR) handles crimes that violate federal laws, such as possession by civilians of weapons reserved for the use of the armed forces. The investigative and prosecutorial system is similar to that of the state.

The Police, the Army, and Security in Chiapas

While federal and state judicial police investigate crimes within their jurisdictions, state security police, known as Policía de Seguridad Pública, or Public Security Police, are responsible for ensuring order and preventing crimes. Overseen state-wide by the Ministry of Government, they dress in dark blue uniforms and are deployed throughout the state under the command of the presidents of the municipalities where they are located. Within the state, Municipal Police, Transit Police, and Auxiliary Police also operate.

Mexico's federal weapons statute allows ejido members to carry .22 caliber rifles and shotguns,62 weapons commonly used by aggressors in rural violence. Throughout rural Chiapas, however, people interviewed by Human Rights Watch/Americas also indicated that they had seen civilians carrying high-caliber weapons, such as AK47s, AR15s,63 and Uzis, in violation of federal law, which reserves for the armed forces the use of all semi- and fully automatic rifles.64 There is no provision in Mexican law for white guards or civilian organizations to operate with weaponry or firearms; when they do so in view of police, the state is permitting a violation of the law.

In Chiapas, it is estimated that between 40,000 and 60,000 soldiers are deployed to combat the EZLN, while thousands more have been involved in social exercises, in the words of Defense Secretary Enrique Cervantes Aguilar, to "assist, without confusion or indecision, in the construction of the new country that is being born."65 The state government's General State Police Coordinating Group (Coordinación General de la Policía del Estado) is run by a Mexican army general, following a pattern throughout Mexico of soldiers taking on civilian-policing functions.

Guardias Blancas - White Guards in Chiapas

Violent Acts Committed by White Guards

Organized violence carried out by civilians has a long history in Chiapas. General Jesús Agustín Castro seized power in the state in 1914, imposing a government that supported a federal constitution, in opposition to the landholders who maintained power in Chiapas, who were more concerned about developments in the state. Landowners armed to fight back, in part to maintain the privileges they had come to enjoy, including debt-based peonage, which was abolished a month after Castro took power.66 According to anthropologist George A. Collier,

Freeing the workers. . .angered Chiapas's landholding factions in both the western part of the state and the highlands and inspired them to bury their differences and unite to "defend" Chiapas against the revolutionaries. The landowners recruited armed gangs to carry out guerrilla missions against the revolutionaries.67

These armed gangs, called mapaches, may be considered the direct ancestors of what became known as white guards, armed ranch-hands employed by ranchers and landowners to maintain order on their estates and in towns by any means necessary. For many years they have worked alongside the state security police toevict peasants from occupied lands. As part of its policy of promoting the interests of private landowners and smallholders, successive state governments have preserved the right of owners to police their own territory. Thus, Efraín Arana Osorio, state governor from 1952 to 1958 introduced a Ranch Auxiliary Police Force (Cuerpo de Policía Auxiliar Ganadera) to combat rustling and land invasions, made up of ranch-hands and peasants working in their spare time.68 His successor, Samuel León Brindis, passed the Livestock Law (Ley de Ganadería), which recognized an Honorary Livestock Police, whose members are to be appointed by ranchers' associations.69

Ranchers describe their armed employees as a response to a legitimate need to protect their property, while denying that they are, in the words of rancher Jorge Constantino Kanter, "paid assassins."70 He explained to an interviewer from a Chiapas daily, "White guards have never existed. I repeat that those of us who are property owners have taken some organized actions to protect what's ours. In the past, before the armed conflict, some such cases took place in Chicomuselo, Ocosingo, and La Trinitaria. The lack of government support in the face of the [land] invasions obliged us to act."71

Nonetheless, considerable evidence indicates that armed civilians have acted in organized groups to protect or recover property, confront their employers' political enemies during protests and rallies, and defend municipal buildings against takeovers. In the process, they have threatened and killed their opponents. Nongovernmental Mexican human rights groups, journalists, and the CNDH have documented the actions of white guards for years. In 1990, Human Rights Watch published Human Rights in Mexico: A Policy of Impunity, which recorded the links between police, wealthy landowners, and hired gunmen who committed abuses.72

The continuing acquiescence and complicity of state authorities in the activities of white guards was evident from a case involving an attack by a groupof white guards on peasants from the Ejido Patricio, Playas de Catazajá, who were staging a protest demonstration in the central square of Palenque on November 16, 1994. The object of the demonstration was to protest the violent eviction of the ejido members on November 11, when municipal authorities and white guards raided the ejido, destroying homes, firing guns, and wounding five people.

Approximately 300 white guards, wearing red arm-bands and backed by agents of the municipal police, attacked the demonstrators in the square. The police used teargas, and the white guards captured several of the protesters, including a leader of the peasant organization Xi'Nich, whom they took to the white guards' headquarters, where they forcibly shaved his head and paraded him round the square, threatening to burn him alive. Before leaving, the ranchers forced the peasants aboard trucks and ran them out of town.

In its investigation of this case, the CNDH concluded that state authorities had had plenty of warning that the attack was imminent, since the ranchers had broadcast warnings on the radio forty-eight hours previously, but took no action to prevent it.73 The CNDH found,

It was proven that once the public security corps took control of the situation, they did not take action against the aggressors or confiscate the firearms they carried, which means they consented to and tolerated illegal acts carried out by non-government actors; [it was also proven] that the investigations initiated into these facts were delayed in the process, leading to impunity for those responsible [for the acts].74

Another attack coordinated by police and ranchers took place on January 10, 1995, in Chicomuselo municipality. Early in the morning of that day, some 200 peasants took over the municipal palace in protest against the election as state governor of Eduardo Robledo Rincón, the PRI candidate. The protestors considered the vote to be fraudulent. Although the PRD claimed that the occupation had been peaceful, some of the peasants were armed, and during the day seven people were killed - including the local commander of the municipal police and his deputy, four peasants, and a smallholder - and three others wounded in shoot-outs between the peasants and the police. In a communiqué issued later, the stategovernment accused the protesters of shooting the police commander in the head after taking him prisoner and torturing him.75

The circumstances surrounding the deaths have been disputed, but both sides appear to have participated in the violence.

Before the police arrived at the scene, armed men wearing the same red arm-bands seen in Palenque months earlier surrounded the municipal building. Even after the police showed up, they remained in the streets with the obvious permission of the police.76 According to one witness, white guards fired repeatedly at the crowd, killing Vicente Soto, a smallholder who had taken position on a corner.77

The parish priest, Miguel Angel de Alba Cruz, narrowly escaped after he saw people in civilian clothes firing into the church precinct. Taking refuge in the sacristy with four others, he emerged after an hour of gunfire. A group of civilians, some of them hooded, took up positions, aiming their weapons directly at him. He retreated inside, then went to the door of the church and identified himself as the parish priest. The men fired several shots at him, one of which grazed his stomach and right elbow. He retreated to a window of the building and again shouted out that he was the parish priest. Another bullet struck him in the right shoulder. De Alba Cruz managed to take refuge in the parish house. From his hiding place heheard the windows shatter and smelled teargas. Men entered the building still firing and proceeded to break into the rooms and rifle through their contents.78

Impunity and Unconvincing Government Denials in White Guard

Cases

Almost eighteen months after the Palenque incident, no action had been taken against police who permitted the armed civilians to attack the protestors or against officials of the Office of the State Attorney General who acted negligently by failing to investigate properly the crimes taking place there.79 In the Chicomuselo case, Chiapas state authorities moved to file charges against people on both sides of the conflict who were found responsible for the killings, though the arrest warrants that had been issued were not carried out, according to the most recent CNDH information available.80 More than a year after the confrontation, the case against police who permitted the participation of armed civilians in the Chicomuselo incident languished in the prosecutor's office, and the police were never charged.81

Despite detailed documentation on the white guards, state government officials steadfastly refuse to acknowledge their existence. For instance, eight days before the January 1995 stand-off between peasants and white guards in Chicomuselo, the federal Ministry of Government, responding to a request from the PRD, asked officials in Chiapas to investigate whether or not white guards existed in the area. On June 7, 1995, less than a month after the CNDH issued a report finding proof of white guard action in conjunction with police, the Ministry of Government informed the PRD that local and state government officials had found "absolutely no indication that could lead us to presume the presence of white guards in the municipality of Chicomuselo."82

By permitting white guards to work alongside police, Mexican authorities acquiesce to the violent crimes committed by the armed civilians, in violation of international human rights standards that require the Mexican government to guarantee that its agents enforce the law and to ensure that those under its jurisdiction are able to exercise their rights. The coordination of police and armed civilians indicates that officials are actively complicit in these violations, not just passively permissive. When this complicity is combined with the impunity for police who permit white guards to operate, the state government must be seen as facilitating the abuses of armed civilians organized as white guards. Though the violations fall under state jurisdiction, the federal government has also failed to fulfill its international human rights responsibilities to ensure that human rights are respected in Chiapas, preferring instead to accept the state government's facile dismissal of the problem of white guards.

Violence in Northern Chiapas

The Emergence of "Peace and Justice"

Peace and Justice emerged after the January 1994 appearance of the EZLN, but observers offer different views on just when the group was established. A state government briefing report prepared for federal legislators in October 1995 noted,

The organization Peace and Justice, which is located in Tila municipality, emerges in 1994 as a response to the uncertainty generated by the eruption of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Later, this organization begins to strengthen itself with the incorporation of leaders in the area who are active in official organizations. . . .83

The Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center has written that the group was founded in March 1995.84

In either case, by mid-1995, Peace and Justice was clearly active. Harassment of ejido members belonging to opposition parties in neighboring communities in the lowland region of Tila, such as El Limar, Nuevo Limar, Miguel Alemán, Usipá, and Pantianijá, has led to the exodus of thousands of peasants to the municipal seatsof Salto de Agua or to communities where the PRD has a majority. At the time of Human Rights Watch/Americas's visit, in August 1996, one of these communities, Masojá Shucjá, was under siege and cut off from the outside world by Peace and Justice vigilantes who were blocking all the exit roads. Several residents had been killed or were "disappeared" after having tried to leave, as described below.

Peace and Justice is reported to recruit many of its members from the ejidos of El Limar, Miguel Alemán, and El Crucero in the Ch'ol-speaking municipality of Tila. Individuals interviewed by Human Rights Watch/Americas claimed that its organizers include an alderman from Tila, Marcos Albino Torres, a bilingual teacher from El Limar, Diego Vásquez Pérez, and the area's local PRI congressman, Samuel Sánchez Sánchez. Victims of Peace and Justice can easily provide the names and home communities of leaders of specific attacks, and have given this information to authorities, but no action has been taken against the aggressors.

Interviewed by Human Rights Watch/Americas in Tila, First Alderman Marcos Albino Torres told us that Peace and Justice was a civil association whose full name is "Development, Peace and Justice" (Desarrollo, Paz y Justicia, A.C." He described its goals as "consciousness-raising" (concientización) and said that the organization had plans for income-generating projects in Agua Fría (livestock raising and marketing) and Nuevo Limar (animal feeds). He was unable to give an address of an office where the organization could be contacted, and said that it had representatives in each community. Pressed further, Albino acknowledged that the group's functions included the defense of their communities, there being no other alternative since "we cannot be in every community all the time with security agents."85

In a separate interview, local Congressman Samuel Sánchez Sánchez described the genesis of the group in clear self-defense terms, noting that Peace and Justice members from several communities coordinated activities toward this end. Queried about why the group's presence in several communities coincided with the forced departure of PRD supporters, he noted, "Yes, but it is justifiable for a simple reason. They [the PRD] don't want to abandon their belligerent attitude."86

The state government briefing report named the National Peasant Confederation and the Peasant Teachers' Society (Sociedad CampesinaMagisterial, SOCAMA) as two of the groups whose militants strengthened Peace and Justice, noting that both are identified with the PRI.

This same report noted that weapons had been introduced into rural communities. Villagers from Nuevo Limar, Tila, who had been forced to leave their homes in August 1996 because of threats by Peace and Justice, told Human Rights Watch/Americas that they had been arbitrarily detained and fined by the municipal authorities and that the money collected had been used to buy weapons. They said they saw boxes of ammunition being unloaded from a truck carrying farm produce, and that the ammunition was concealed among egg boxes.87 This testimony is consistent with the analysis contained in the state government briefing report on the Tila situation. It noted, "Regarding the introduction of arms in the region, it is known that it takes place through wholesale merchants of food products and canned goods."88

Human Rights Watch/Americas did not obtain evidence to corroborate the widely held belief that the military trains Peace and Justice, though victims of some attacks informed us that former soldiers were among the leaders of an assault they suffered.

Tila Municipality

Violence in Tila municipality was rife both before and after the October 1995 municipal elections. The murder of a well-known peasant leader of the PRI-affiliated CNC, Nicolás Pérez Ramírez, on March 24, 1995, is still deeply resented by PRI loyalists in the region, in part because of Pérez's reputation as a leader, in part because it was seen as an example of an increasingly belligerent stance on the part of EZLN and PRD sympathizers.89 According to PRI Congressman SamuelSánchez Sánchez, the formation of Peace and Justice was, in fact, a response to this "radicalization."90 Sánchez Sánchez assured Human Rights Watch/Americas that Pérez Ramírez's murderers were in jail.91

In June 1996, a wave of apparently tit-for-tat killings rocked Tila municipality.92 An analysis of the following cases from this period from Nuevo Limar, Miguel Alemán, Masojá Shucjá, and Jolnixtié indicates a pattern of government complicity in the violence. As is the case with white guards, documented above, the government has shown through action and inaction that it is more than just permissive of the violent actions of Peace and Justice. Human Rights Watch/Americas must conclude that authorities actively acquiesce to the abuses committed by armed civilians in Tila. Authorities frequently know about abuses but fail to act to prevent or punish them. Further, when officials arbitrarily detain opponents of Peace and Justice or fail to investigate denunciations of crimes committed by the group, they lend the perpetrators of rural violence the legitimacy of government institutions. The appearance of one-sided justice in the form of detentions in attacks against the PRI but not attacks against the PRD is also deeply troubling and deserving of further study.

Tila Municipality - Community of Nuevo Limar

On August 21, 1996, some fifty supporters of the PRD made their way on foot from the community of Nuevo Limar, in the Tila lowlands, to the municipal capital of Salto de Agua, where they asked the parish priest, Alan Jenkins, for refuge. Members of the six refugee families told Human Rights Watch/Americas that their initial departure from Nuevo Limar was blocked by some sixty civilian guards posted on the road, some of whom wore the blue uniforms of Public Security Police, though the refugees recognized the uniformed men as community members who were not police. The guards' leaders were said to carry automatic weapons, described as AR15s, Uzis, and AK47s.

The family members left the community after they learned of a decision by Peace and Justice members to attack them in retaliation for a complaint lodged with the Office of the State Attorney General regarding an earlier Peace and Justice assault. According to the refugees, the earlier assault took place on August 4, 1996, after a community leader belonging to Peace and Justice threatened Diego Gómez Ramírez, a member of the PRD. The leader accused Gómez of threatening community members from the PRI in early August 1996. At an August 4 community meeting called by Peace and Justice supporters, a former soldier said at the meeting that they should take strong actions to "straighten out" the PRD supporters.93 Participants of the meeting decided to destroy Gómez's house as punishment. When Peace and Justice members arrived at Diego Gómez's home that same day, they found his daughter Rosa alone, and one of them raped her. Gómez denounced the rape to an official of the Office of the State Attorney General in nearby El Limar, who told him that there would be no investigation if he could not pay a sum of money.

The August 1996 attacks were not the first against PRD supporters in Nuevo Limar. One victim recounted to Human Rights Watch/Americas a September 1995 assault on twenty-six people:

These armed people have been in the community since September 4, 1995. We are PRD sympathizers. The municipal authorities started organizing against the PRD. They want only one party: the official party. They accused us of being EZLN members. They held a meeting with people from other communities - Limar, Crucero, Miguel Alemán, Masojá Chico, and others.

People from Nuevo Limar and other communities surrounded my house. Armed, they entered my house. They covered our faces and tied our hands behind our backs with a nylon cord. They punched us. They punched me seven times. When they barged in, they said, "Here's the King, Christ," taunting me because I'm a catechist. They didn't take me out walking, but rather I was carried by five people.

They dressed Antonio Vásquez Martínez in an EZLN uniform and gave him a wooden rifle. He was chosen because he was a catechist and so they accused him of being an EZLN member. They say we're all members of the EZLN. Afterwards, twenty-six of us were taken to Limar. The army was there and took photographs. We were there, at the police station, for about fifteen hours.94

Members of the police, army, and Office of the State Attorney General all dealt with the detainees. The agent of the Public Ministry released all twenty-six detainees without charge and did not even question them, according to the refugees. They were, however, questioned by army officers, who accused them of being members of the EZLN. On their way back to Nuevo Limar, police agents tried to convince them to abandon the PRD, urging, "Join up with [the PRI] and there will be no more problems." When they arrived, they found the community in a meeting, and they were again surrounded by a hostile crowd. On the following day, the authorities asked them to sign an agreement to leave the PRD. All of them signed. Eduardo Sosa del Río, the director of the Public Security Police, later denied that the police had participated in the September arrests.95

Fourteen PRD supporters were detained on June 11, 1996, held for twenty-four hours and released after paying a sum of money described as a "fine" for an undisclosed infraction.

In this case, Peace and Justice members from several communities worked together to harass supporters of the PRD and Catholics, displaying their belief that membership in the Catholic Church is tantamount to belonging to the EZLN. Police facilitated their abuses by permitting Peace and Justice to abduct their opponents and take them to the station, rather than take impartial action to protect the victimsand apprehend the aggressors, thereby violating international law that requires the state to ensure the rights of those under its jurisdiction. Police also became complicit in arbitrary detentions. Further, the army took advantage of the situation to dress up, photograph, and interrogate a community member deemed by Peace and Justice to be guerrilla supporter, signaling federal involvement in the arbitrary detentions and the army's apparent intention to incriminate the detainee.

Testimony indicating that the representative of the Attorney General's Office failed to investigate the attacks denounced by the victims is troubling. The state government has failed to provide for judicial protection of the victims, as required by international law. The local Office of the State Attorney General is located in El Limar, an environment distinctly inhospitable to people perceived as opponents of the PRI.

Human Rights Watch/Americas is also troubled that the judicial official appears to have acted out of partisan support for members of Peace and Justice. To have done so would violate international human rights standards that are binding on Mexico and that prohibit discrimination in the application of justice. On December 5, 1996, internally displaced people from Nuevo Limar returned to the community. No detentions have been made in the case of the prior attacks.96

Tila Municipality - Community of Libertad Jolnixtié Second Section

On June 17, 1996, the army entered Jolnixtié First Section and Libertad Jolnixtié Second Section, two predominantly PRD annexes of the Masojá Jolnixtié ejido, and evacuated PRI supporters, who were brought to El Limar.97 After hearing rumors that the army was going to bomb the communities, some 1,400 PRD supporters also left, seeking refuge in the community of Jomajil. The following day, four PRI supporters who were not taken out of the community were ambushed and killed in Libertad Jolnixtié Second Section.

A PRI supporter evacuated by the army and interviewed by Human Rights Watch/Americas in El Limar explained what happened:

Jolnixtié was surrounded by hooded people (encapuchados). The army took us out. On the next day, June 18, a family that lives outside of town was killed, ambushed by the PRD. There was one person detained and others whose arrest was ordered.98

The one man arrested, Ricardo García Hernández, was a PRD supporter from Libertad Jolnixtié Second Section. Interviewed by Human Rights Watch/Americas in Cerro Hueco Prison in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, García claimed to be a scapegoat for the June 18 killings. He recalled:

On June 17, the military arrived to take out the PRI supporters. A woman came to say that they were going to bomb, so we left. On the 18th I returned to my house to get clothes, because we left with nothing. The army was there and they detained me, accusing me of having killed José Martínez Pérez.

They took me to El Limar and held me for a day and a night with no food. They didn't ask me anything. They took me on the 19th to Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Then they made me put on a blue police uniform - I don't know why - took me outside, and made me fire a gun.

They blindfolded me and tied my arms. They put a gun to my head and told me to save myself by admitting guilt.99

In their haste to take action in the case of the murder of José Martínez Pérez, soldiers arbitrarily detained García Hernández. No arrest warrant was issued for his detention, since he was picked up by soldiers the day of the murder, though not at the scene of the crime. García Hernández was threatened by police and subjected to psychological torture, in violation of international laws prohibiting such treatment. The arrest of García Hernández is one of the cases that state judicialauthorities agreed to review in November 1996, after detainees went on hunger strike in Cerro Hueco Prison.

Tila Municipality - Community of Masojá Shucjá

On August 29, 1996, Human Rights Watch/Americas representatives, accompanied by representatives of the Fray Bartolomé Human Rights Center, the CNDH, and the state government, made the first visit to Masojá Shucjá of any outside group in more than two months.100 Members of Peace and Justice in the neighboring community of Miguel Alemán had prohibited members of the community from traveling on the road since the wave of killings the prior June. Our delegation went to obtain testimonies from members of Masojá Shucjá; the state government agreed to accompany the human rights delegation and provide police escort for security.

Residents told of two incidents in which people from Masojá Shucjá had been attacked by Peace and Justice while trying to pass through the community of Miguel Alemán, on their way to El Limar. Human Rights Watch/Americas was unable to obtain first-hand testimony on one of the cases, involving Minerva Guadalupe Pérez Torres, a nineteen-year-old student. According to residents of Masojá Shucjá, she was pulled from a vehicle in Miguel Alemán on June 22 and not seen again dead or alive. Witnesses have been too afraid to come forward.101

Human Rights Watch/Americas did investigate in detail a second case, from July 1996. A crowd in Miguel Alemán, a Peace and Justice stronghold, forced a military and police convoy to stop as it entered the community, in order to apprehend residents from Masojá Shucjá who had joined the convoy hoping to pass Miguel Alemán safely. Gen. Sergio Bautista, who at the time headed the nearby military base in El Limar, told Human Rights Watch/Americas that he had no knowledge of this incident.102

Human Rights Watch/Americas interviewed two victims, the brothers Alfredo and Artemio Ramírez Torres. Peace and Justice pulled them from a car and beat them, as police and soldiers looked on. Eventually, police rescued the men and brought them to El Limar. That was the last day that the Ramírez Torres brothers saw their brother Juan, whom they witnessed pulled from a car by community members and dragged into Miguel Alemán. He has not been seen since.

Artemio Ramírez Torres, interviewed by Human Rights Watch/Americas in Cerro Hueco Prison, recounted:

On July 4, an army convoy passed by Masojá Shucjá. I had not left the community since mid-June because the PRI was grabbing people from the PRD in Miguel Alemán. I asked the convoy if I could return with them to Limar on their way back. At 3:00 p.m., I joined the convoy.

There were about fifteen vehicles, one from the police, but a group of PRI members stopped us in Miguel Alemán, about fifty or seventy people. A soldier got down and asked why we couldn't go through. They threw stones and took us out of the cars. They took Juan back into the mountains.

The police brought us back to El Limar for our own safety. After we got there, people surrounded the police station. The police said that we couldn't leave. Early the next morning the police commander went to Miguel Alemán, returning at 9:00 a.m. He said we couldn't go because they accused us of killing people who lived there. We slept two more nights at the police station, then, on July 6, they drove us out in the back of a truck, covered with a blanket, to the Public Ministry in Ocosingo, then to the Public Ministry in Tuxtla Gutiérrez. They never had an arrest warrant.103

A review of the case file suggests that the Ramírez Torres brothers were scapegoated. The Office of the State Attorney General accused them of participating in an ambush of a truck from the community of Aguas Frías, Tila municipality, on June 17. The Office of the State Attorney General opened a fileon the Aguas Frías case on the day of the attack, but the only eyewitness testimony gathered for more than two weeks afterward was that of Honorio Sánchez López, who was wounded in the ambush. According to a prosecutor's rendering of Sánchez López's June 24 statement, "because the declarant was distracted he could not identify his aggressors."104 According to the case documents, no testimony implicating Artemio Ramírez Torres and his brother was received prior to the Miguel Alemán incident. Only after the brothers were in protective custody did people come forward to accuse them. Starting just after 2:00 p.m. on July 5, the day after the brothers entered custody, the representative of the Office of the State Attorney General took five successive testimonies, all of which implicated the brothers directly. For instance, Filadelfo de Jesús Jiménez Vázquez, the wounded driver of the truck attacked on June 17, stated that afternoon that he could identify Alfredo and Artemio Ramírez Torres as the assailants.105 At 7:00 p.m. on July 5, according to the documents, the two brothers were determined to be the "probable parties guilty of the murder and injuries" caused on June 17.

Human Rights Watch/Americas is deeply troubled by the state's actions against the Ramírez Torres brothers. The prosecutor accepted testimonies presented in circumstances that strongly suggested that the witnesses had come forward to frame the two men, then made no effort to check the credibility of that evidence. While only a thorough investigation of the accusations against the brothers could have determined their validity, the prosecutor appeared to act discriminatorily against the brothers. That is, faced with a mob of PRI supporters angry at two men in their custody, officials accepted accusations made by members of the same crowd as sufficient evidence that the brothers were probably guilty of a crime. The brothers' assertion that they were in protective custody is reasonable, since officials took testimony against them and deemed them "probably guilty of a crime" after they were already in detention, and the case file indicates that no evidence against them existed prior to then. Thus, the brothers appear to have been arbitrarily detained. This is another case in which judicial officials appear to have acted in a partisan manner.

In addition to this highly questionable prosecution, state officials apparently acquiesced in the crimes committed in Miguel Alemán, including interference with free movement, the assault on Artemio and Alfredo Ramírez Torres, and theabduction and subsequent "disappearance" of their brother, Juan. The federal and Chiapas state authorities failed, therefore, to ensure the rights of the brothers, as required by international law. The case of the Ramírez brothers is one of the detentions that state officials agreed to review as part of the November 1996 accord with PRD detainees who were on hunger strike.

The July 4 detention of Artemio Ramírez Torres was not the first he suffered in El Limar. He told us that on April 7, 1996, soldiers in El Limar detained him, held him for a day, then released him without further ado.106 A captain with a list of suspected guerrillas questioned him. Ramírez Torres attributed the detention to a dispute he had with residents of El Limar over transportation routes; his competitors, he surmised, had denounced him as a member of the EZLN. Like the attack on residents of Nuevo Limar, soldiers appeared to take advantage of accusations of guerrilla complicity to arbitrarily hold and interrogate a suspect, facilitating the abuses committed by private citizens and committing their own in the process.

While Human Rights Watch/Americas interviewed residents and refugees in Masojá Shucjá's one-room community meeting hall, Mexican soldiers appeared in the community, an action that intimidated witnesses providing testimonies. General Bautista explained to Human Rights Watch/Americas, "This is our jurisdiction. We came because we are impartial. We are here to provide security to the people," indicating that the community's left-leaning sympathies could be a security risk for us.107 Given that Human Rights Watch/Americas had arranged with the state government for security, the general's explanation was hardly plausible. At the insistence of Human Rights Watch/Americas, General Bautista and the troops under his command withdrew from Masojá Shucjá.108

Tila Municipality - Community of Miguel Alemán

Miguel Alemán, the first community outside El Limar on the road toward Masojá Shucjá, is a Peace and Justice stronghold. Beginning in June 1996, its residents refused to permit people to enter or leave Masojá Shucjá, a situation that remained as this report went to press. Human Rights Watch/Americas, in fact, was stopped and harassed in the community during a fact-finding mission to the region.

In order to reach Masojá Shucjá, Human Rights Watch/Americas had to travel through Miguel Alemán, an uneventful leg of the journey. However, while returning to El Limar from Masojá Shucjá, a mob stopped us in Miguel Alemán, despite our high-powered escort, consisting of representatives of the state director general of government, the CNDH, a police commander, and a truck full of Public Security Police. When we turned a corner to enter Miguel Alemán, we found the rest of our convoy halted in front of us. A menacing crowd of some fifty Indian men, some armed with sticks and knives, surged around our car, leaving the other vehicles alone. A boulder was rolled up against the front axle to block our exit. Several men who appeared to be leaders began to harangue, denounce, and threaten us, accusing us of being murderers, priests, and communists. Others reached inside the vehicle and pulled the hair of the occupants of the front seats, forcing us to close the windows despite the stifling heat. Someone punctured a back tire of our vehicle. They began to rock the car. As they did so, residents of Miguel Alemán accused people in Masojá Shucjá of carrying out attacks against them.

When the faces pressed against the glass cleared enough for us to see in front, we noticed that the occupants of the other vehicles in the convoy had not been molested. The police, supposedly our escorts, were still sitting passively in the back of their truck as if nothing unusual were happening. We became aware that negotiations were underway involving the police commander and civilians whom we took to be leaders of Peace and Justice. After a half hour of discussions, state and municipal officials arrived, including Director General of Government Mario Arturo Coutiño and Marcos Albino Torres, the first alderman of Tila, with whom we had met in the Tila town hall the previous day. Soon after, the crowd suddenly melted away and we were allowed to pass. Since the incident, no action has been taken by authorities to ensure freedom of transit on the road.

Some residents of Miguel Alemán took refuge in Masojá Shucjá after being expelled by Peace and Justice. Mario Torres Torres, born in Miguel Alemán but displaced to Masojá Shucjá, recounted recent problems to Human Rights Watch/Americas:

I've been living here for one year. They kicked me out of Miguel Alemán because they say I'm a militant in the PRD. On August 28, 1995, they burned the houses of three families - a total of fifteen people - and that's when I left. On March 31, 1996, we signed an accord with the people of Miguel Alemán, and we returned. But on May 18, they burned us out again.109

The authorities have taken no action in this case. They did move quickly, however, to detain three men whom PRI supporters in Miguel Alemán accused of carrying out attacks against them. Police arrested Mateo, Diego, and Juan Vásquez on December 8, 1995, shortly after the accusation was made at a meeting of Peace and Justice. The brothers were eventually charged with illegal possession of arms, for which they were found guilty in March 1996. Juan was shot to death in July 1996 in circumstances that have not been clarified.110 The two surviving brothers have been unable to attend the appeals processes, because Peace and Justice has not permitted them to leave Masojá Shucjá.111 As this report went to press, the brothers were still unable to travel safely to the court; the judge hearing the case has no legal basis to order protection for the brothers to be able to do so.112

Authorities have failed to take action against residents of Miguel Alemán who prohibit the passage of travelers on the road past the community, thereby failing to ensure the right to freedom of movement. They have also failed to ensure the right to judicial protection for those attacked and expelled.

Despite the impunity enjoyed by residents of Miguel Alemán, authorities appear quick to act on denunciations made by PRI supporters, as they did in the case of the Vásquez brothers, adding weight to the argument that officials discriminate depending on the political affiliation of the victim.

Sabanilla Municipality

On March 22, 1996, PRD militants occupied the town hall of Sabanilla to demand the resignation of the PRI mayor, Benedicto Jaime Pérez Hernández, forhaving, they claimed, "armed and protected PRI paramilitary groups in the municipality of Sabanilla and neighboring Simojovel."113 The protestors left after negotiating a solution to the stand-off.114