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MEXICO: Sectarian Violence Wreaks Havoc in Tzotzil Community

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Aug 11 2004 (IPS) - Impunity and political and religious intolerance will lead to an increase in sectarian violence in the highlands city of San Juan Chamula in the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas over the next few months, warn human rights activists.

The city, which is home to 60,000 Tzotzil Indians, ended the latest chapter Tuesday of violent clashes in which more than 100 people have been killed in the past 30 years.

A majority of the murders have gone unpunished, the Chiapas police acknowledge.

A group of around 200 Indians agreed Tuesday to release the mayor and five other officials, including the local police chief, who they had thrown in jail and held for nearly three days, accusing them of corruption.

The release was the result of over 20 hours of intense negotiations with Chiapas state authorities, who promised to investigate the allegations of the local residents.

The group that seized the city officials accuses them of embezzling around 265,000 dollars in public funds.

According to journalists and local residents, the group came close to lynching Mayor José Gómez of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

"We were treated like animals," Gómez told the press after he and the other officials were freed. "They threw urine, excrement, sticks, cold water and stones at us, and kicked us."

There is a state of "total impunity" in San Juan Chamula, and this week’s events were "one more demonstration of the prevailing climate, and of what could lie ahead," Michael Chamberlain, coordinator of research in the Chiapas-based Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Centre, told IPS.

In the 82-sq-km municipality of San Juan Chamula, two rival religious and political groups have coexisted in tension for decades, and neither the state nor the federal government have been able to impose a state of law.

On one hand are the local political leaders who belong to the PRI, merchants and "traditionalist Catholics" opposed to the reforms ushered in by Vatican Council II in the 1960s. On the other are locals who belong to Protestant churches and are politically aligned with the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

In the midst of the tension, the indigenous people who have suffered the worst violence are the Protestants, because the PRI, which was in power for 71 years until 2000, has also governed San Juan Chamula since the 1930s.

Since 1970, more than 30,000 local Indians have been kicked out of town on the argument that they were breaking local laws and professing to Protestant religions.

The mayor and his associates were seized by a group of Protestants, backed by local shopkeepers opposed to the PRI.

Meanwhile, the traditionalist Catholics accuse that group of killing more than 30 local residents over the past few years.

The group that threw Mayor Gómez in jail says he and his cronies embezzled funds from public works.

The state police were unable to rescue Gómez, because hundreds of locals armed with sticks and stones blocked the roads leading into town. The officials were finally released after negotiations that were closed to the press.

The group also ransacked and set fire to the home of another city official, Juan Pérez, who had previously fled the town, according to press reports.

The escalation of the decades-long conflict occurred as the government of Chiapas, in the hands of independent Governor Pablo Salazar, is preparing for the October state elections, in which mayors and state legislators will be chosen.

The federal government of President Vicente Fox and the Salazar administration in Chiapas "promised to bring about a state of law in Chamula, but they have utterly failed to do so," said Chamberlain.

"They have not been able, or have not wanted, to do anything, which is why sectarianism reigns supreme," he argued.

According to the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Centre, created by former bishop of Chiapas Samuel Ruiz in 1989, religion has been used by the PRI in San Juan Chamula as a pretext to repress dissidence by anyone who defies the political, economic and religious status quo.

The Human Rights Centre’s report "Expulsions and Human Rights in San Juan Chamula" said the PRI converted the town into a model for a structure of local bosses used to control the population in political, social and religious terms.

"Opponents of the PRI are fed up, and have decided to lash out, as shown by the seizing of the mayor," said Chamberlain.

Gómez admitted to the press that in San Juan Chamula there is an unresolved conflict "between Catholics" who support the PRI and Protestant opponents of the party.

The discrimination against Protestants has led to the expulsion of 200 children from public schools because they come from non-Catholic families.

Local indigenous resident Guadalupe López decided in March to abandon Catholicism and join a Protestant church. A week after she told some friends about her decision, she and her husband found themselves without electricity or water, she told journalists.

In addition, the city education committee called them to say that their children – ages six, nine and 12 – would no longer be accepted in the neighbourhood school due to their new faith.

The Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Centre has offered several times to help seek a solution to the sectarian conflicts, but without success.

The pastoral team of former bishop Ruiz – an exponent of liberation theology or the "preferential option for the poor" – and current Chiapas Bishop Felipe Arizmendi, who was appointed to his post in May 2000, also failed in their efforts.

According to the public prosecutor’s office in Chiapas, the confrontations in San Juan Chamula – in which the groups in conflict often use high-powered weapons – are the result of a dispute over control of the city government, not just religious rivalries.

In San Juan Chamula, nothing changed when the PRI finally lost its hold on power in 2000 in the elections in which Fox, of the National Action Party (PAN), was elected president.

Legal investigations show that the PRI sponsored the political and educational training of several indigenous leaders in San Juan Chamula, who were later integrated into the community’s system of religious posts, in different leadership roles.

In time, those local leaders and their heirs became the undisputed political heads of the city, who PRI governments furnished with funding, thus helping entrench them in power.

Chamberlain warned that "the mayor’s release has not put an end to the violence."

"It is very likely that there will be a vengeful reaction and that the October municipal elections will become a battleground without any guarantees" of safety or fairness, the activist predicted.

The Tzotzil Indians in San Juan Chamula have nothing to do with the internationally renowned indigenous Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) that rose up in arms in January 1994 in remote mountain jungle regions of Chiapas.