U.S. Sees Rebels Posing A Threat to Mexican Vote
By JOSE DE CORDOBA Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
MEXICO CITY -- Mexican security officials are publicly confident about their ability to keep the peace during this pivotal presidential election year. But in Washington, U.S. Defense Department officials are concerned guerrilla groups still have the ability to "distract and disrupt" the electoral process.
An overview of Mexico's insurgent problem written last year by Pentagon analysts says that aside from three recognized guerrilla groups, there may be as many as a dozen small revolutionary bands spread throughout the country that "are capable of engaging in revolutionary violence, or who are building that capability." While guerrillas have no ability to take power except in the "most unlikely worst-case scenario," they could launch violent attacks that would mar Mexico's move toward democracy, the report says.
A top Mexican military-intelligence officer says the U.S. analysis "bears no resemblance to reality and is just wrong." But the officer wouldn't give any further details. Other Mexican officials say that with three well-known exceptions, these guerrilla groups don't exist. They point to a pair of recent events as evidence they have the situation well in hand. The most notable occurred Feb. 6 when federal police peacefully broke a strike by radical students that had shuttered Mexico's national university for 10 months. No evidence was found that insurgents had taken advantage of the strike to build an armed urban presence. Officials here also point to the arrest in November of two top leaders of one of the groups they acknowledge.
Opposition to Violence
What is more, given the democratic opening Mexico has experienced in recent years, the vast majority of Mexicans are opposed to violence as a means of political change, says David Najera, a spokesman for the Mexican president.
The report argues the potential for violence by armed groups will increase if the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party extends its 70-year stay in office, as many political analysts expect. Polls give the PRI presidential candidate, former Interior Minister Francisco Labastida, an eight-point lead over his closest rival, Vicente Fox of the center-right National Action Party.
Mexico's government recognizes the existence of just three insurgent groups. The best known is the Zapatista National Liberation Army, with which the government has had an uneasy truce since the insurgents staged a violent, short-lived 1994 revolt in the southern state of Chiapas. The other two are the People's Revolutionary Army, or EPR, which operates mainly in Guerrero and Oaxaca states, and an EPR offshoot formed in 1998 called the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People, or ERPI.
As Many as 12 Other Groups
But the U.S. report says as many as a dozen other small groups exist, mainly in the poverty-stricken mountains of southern and central Mexico. It lists areas in 17 of Mexico's 31 states, as well as in Mexico City, where conditions exist for "the outbreak or increase of revolutionary violence," and it provides an extensive recounting of alleged armed and propaganda actions in some of those areas. The report says these insurgencies now generate as many as 80 casualties a year, a figure another high-ranking Mexican army officer says is "very exaggerated."
"We have investigated over 80 reports or sightings of guerrillas, but we haven't found anything beyond cattle rustlers or bandits," says a spokeswoman for the Federal Preventative Police, which is charged with combating subversion.
According to the report, it is the Zapatistas, who captured world attention with simultaneous attacks on several Chiapas cities and towns on New Year's Day 1994, who have the potential for becoming a disruptive policy problem. With 7,000 combatants and as many as 45,000 sympathizers at the time of the uprising, the report concludes their military capacity "shouldn't be underestimated."
Gen. Jose Gomez Salazar, who commands about 16,000 troops in Chiapas, says he believes armed Zapatistas total no more than 2,000 and count on the support of 15,000 sympathizers. Still, military people and Mexico's political leaders as well say they believe the standoff with the Zapatistas can be resolved only politically. All acknowledge progress on a lasting peace accord with the Zapatistas is unlikely until after the July election.
Mexico's other main insurgent group, the EPR, had about 500 combatants before the schism that gave birth to the ERPI, according to the report. Since its emergence in 1996, the EPR has favored a strategy of protracted guerrilla war in the countryside and has financed its activities, in part, by kidnapping wealthy individuals. The report says the EPR has clashed about 45 times with security forces, causing about 100 casualties. The ERPI, whose two top leaders were arrested in November, favors taking power through a popular insurrection.