Mexico’s South Could Provide Fertile Ground for Rebels

COPALITA, Mexico —  A distance of only nine miles separates 30-year-old Camerino Cruz from the glittering hotels of Santa Cruz Huatulco, where well-heeled Americans relax poolside in designer swimsuits. But the tiny one-bedroom concrete house that Cruz shares with his wife and four children seems a continent away.

“We’ve been patient,” he said Saturday, describing his hamlet’s five-year quest to get the government to provide clean drinking water. He shot a glance at a visitor. “But that could be changing.”

The emergence of a violent new guerrilla group that struck Huatulco and about half a dozen other towns last week, leaving at least 14 dead, has raised a critical question: Can the rebels gain support among the millions of Mexican poor who have been clobbered by economic crisis and the decline of traditional political institutions?

As President Ernesto Zedillo prepared to deliver his state of the union address in the capital today amid intensified security, he declared that the new group--the Popular Revolutionary Army, known by its Spanish initials, EPR--lacks the grass-roots support of the Zapatistas, another rebel group, which briefly fought the government in 1994.

And indeed, in and around Huatulco, few seemed to know much about the new rebels. There were no outright expressions of support for the guerrillas.

But the peasants’ frustration with what they call an unresponsive government and deteriorating economic conditions suggested that the rebels could find fertile ground.

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Cruz earns 30 pesos a day--around $4--preparing food for Continental Airlines passengers. He says some local people approved of the EPR’s attacks because they seemed designed to hurt Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Part, or PRI.

“Everything is changing,” said Cruz, clad only in faded red shorts, a crying 1-year-old daughter at his feet. “Here, nothing ever happened. But perhaps in the future, there could be other [armed] movements.”

The EPR is believed to be no match for the Mexican government’s 150,000 soldiers. But with its arms and sophisticated organization, it has shown it can rattle international investors, the army and the country’s $6-billion tourist industry.

On Saturday, the left-wing group vowed to continue to strike seaside resorts.

“We have decided to widen our field of operations and establish our presence in the main tourist destinations of the nation, such as Cancun, Huatulco and Acapulco, preventing the continuing selling of our territory to Yankee investors,” said a communique released in Mexico City by the EPR’s “Commander Antonio.”

Meanwhile, a battle broke out early Saturday between army and rebel forces in the town of Perdiz about two hours north of here. One rebel and one soldier died, police said.

The uprising comes as Mexico is swept up in economic and political turmoil. After the most severe recession in 60 years, the economy is finally starting to recover.

But many Mexicans have yet to see any sign of improvement in their lives. Unemployment has climbed, per capita income has stagnated for years, and inflation is expected to top 25% this year.

While economists say Zedillo’s free-market, export-oriented policies are helping Mexico recover, the benefits aren’t seen in the muddy, thatched-roof villages surrounding Huatulco.

“With the 25 pesos I earn a day, I can’t even buy a kilo [2.2 pounds] of meat,” Ausencio Dominquez complained as he leaned against his peeling 18-year-old taxi in the town of Barra de la Cruz. “I’m down to eating beans, cactus and squash. People are a bit angry with the government.”

The rebels undoubtedly want to take advantage of the widespread anger over falling living standards, prominent historian Lorenzo Meyer wrote recently.

They realized that the government’s economic policies have hurt “millions for whom there wasn’t, there isn’t and there won’t be a place in the ‘market economy’ and the globalization that replaced the traditional protected statist economy,” he wrote.

Rumors of guerrilla activity in different parts of southern Mexico, including this poverty-ridden state, Oaxaca, surfaced in the media occasionally in recent months. The government always denied them.

But the EPR’s lightning appearance in four states last week suggested it has contacts in a wide swath of the country. In Huatulco, authorities said the rebels appeared to know where their targets were and what schedule the security forces followed.

Silvia Carrena, the wife of a fish vendor in Copalita, said Saturday that her frustration with the PRI government in Oaxaca has nearly boiled over.

Her neighborhood has signed numerous petitions over a five-year period and sent a representative to the capital, she said--but there has still been no progress in getting clean drinking water.

“People . . . ask and ask, and they [the government] don’t give them anything. So they get mad and arm themselves,” she said.

Indeed, the EPR has won the open admiration of a few peasant groups in other parts of the country.

Still, while some peasants may sympathize with the EPR’s aim of toppling the government and implementing drastic economic reform, analysts said it seems unlikely the group will develop a widespread following among Mexico’s traditionally conservative poor.

“With a war, there would be death and more poverty. We don’t want this,” said Luisa Vazquez, 44, a homemaker scrubbing clothes on a washboard in her dirt yard in Barra de la Cruz. “If they want to help the poor, they shouldn’t use this way.”

Sheridan reported from Copalita, Fineman from Mexico City.