In a vicious attack that lasted up to four hours at least 45 of Mexico's indigenous people (men, women and children) were massacred in the county of San Pedro de Chenalno, in Chiapas State, several days before Christmas, 1997. New accounts were generally sketchy, and rarely tried to make sense of the evil, savage event.

The names of over two score dead were not worthy of reporting, and the fleeting references to the Zapatista Rebel Army (EZLN) only left many in a ball of confusion.

One hears of this long, drawn-out premeditated massacre, and wonders: Why? If the reader is at all like the writer, s/he saw or heard nothing at all like an explanation for this planned explosion of death. The writer had to turn to the informative alternative to the establishment press, which, in this instance, meant the Nuevo Amanecer Press, which offered what the establishment media could not -- context.

N.A.P., noted, in a communique issued weeks before the massacre by the Zapatista Central Command, that the indigenous people have been suffering for months at the hands of paramilitary bands and state police, under the auspices and protection of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Indeed, the area of the massacre, San Pedro de Chenalno, was a place where thousands of Indians were congregated, poor, ragged, hungry and ill, refugees from villages in the Chiapan Highlands, under PRI guns.

In a December 12th, 1997, communique, Zapatista Subcommander Marcos wrote of the repression waged against the indigenous people, especially local (Chenalno) Zapatista activists:

"The state and federal governments and the Institutional Revolutionary Party, far from stopping their wave of aggressions, are trying to avoid solving the main problem of Chenalno, which is the eradication of their paramilitary groups and the return of the displaced people to their communities. While it pretends to establish a dialogue, Chiapanecan PRI followers are undertaking the plunder and destruction of the evicted's property. Coffee, cattle, clothes, and domestic utensils are being distributed among the paramilitary as the bounty of a war which, up until now, has only seen shooting coming from one of the sides, that is the government and its political party"

(NAP:amanecer@aa.net 12/16/97)

These paramilitary groups, whose war cry was "An end to the Zapatista seed" have waged an insidious campaign against Indian communities in the Southeast, of theft, robbery, brutality, rape, arson, murders and then, mass murders.

Subcommander Marcos' warning (of Dec. 12th, 1997) was all but ignored, and ten days later (on Dec, 22nd, 1997) Chiapas was marked by an unholy massacre. According to Subcommander Marcos, "The direct responsibility for these bloody events fall upon Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon and the Justice Ministry, who, two days ago, gave a green light to the counterinsurgency project presented by the Federal Army." (NC for DM: moonlight@igc.apc.org 12/15/97).

Nine men, 21 women and 15 children: These people, nameless, invisible, and dead, could very well be alive if the warnings had been heeded. But they were Indians. Indigenous people, Indigenes.

What if 45 whites were killed in a four hour long paramilitary massacre? Their faces, their names, their lives, and their loves would be daily fare of newspapers, magazines and television. But they weren't white. They were red. And just as the Zapatista warnings were ignored the brutal lives and deaths at the hands of the PRIistas are fast on the way of being forgotten.

UNTIL NEXT TIME.