Tension heightened during the weekend when the ranchers and other small
landholders threatened to act after accusing the state government of doing
nothing to restore their properties.
Indians claiming what they say are ancestral lands have seized more than
2,150 properties since the Zapatista National Liberation Army launched a
rebellion on Jan. 1, 1994. The landless Indian squatters sympathize with the
Zapatistas, who are also made up mostly of Maya-descended indigenous groups.
"We are waiting for an attack. The ranchers are armed and the peasants who
have invaded their land are also armed with high-caliber weapons," said German
Perez Ramirez, a spokesman for the State Public Safety office in Frontera
Comalapa, 10 miles southeast.
Squatters at nearby La Aurora have erected barricades in anticipation of a
rancher attack, Perez said.
The isolated area, near the Guatemala border, is mostly tropical jungle but
also is full of rich coffee plantations and irrigated lowlands. The farmers
and ranchers are an independent lot determined to protect their property from
the peasants.
"They are a locus of infection, causing rapes, kidnappings and assaults,"
Gaspar Martinez, a rancher in Frontera Comalapa, said in a telephone
interview.
Most squatters belong to the Emiliano Zapata Peasant Organization, an
Indian group which sympathizes with the rebels. The peasants claim that, over
the decades, ranchers and corrupt officials took their ancestral lands.
Mediators in the year-old uprising fear rancher violence could reignite
the war.
Many of the 400 people who gathered in the plaza of this town, about 500
miles southeast of Mexico City, have lost everything to invading peasants who
claim their land.
Maria del Socorro Camacho, 28, and her husband are tired of waiting for the
government's help.
"It's not possible that all our work, all our effort, is gone overnight,"
she said. "It makes one want to take justice into one's own hands. There's no
other solution."
Land has caused most social problems in Chiapas. An estimated 500,000 acres
of land, mostly cattle ranches and corn farms, are now under the direct
control of the Zapatistas in the rebel zone.
Another 100,000 acres and cattle outside the rebel zone have been seized by
peasants who sympathize with the rebels.
Trying to reduce tension, the government has been paying some of the
ranchers a monthly rent of about $3.25 an acre in compensation for the
seizures but has offered nothing for the cattle and other losses.
"Ownership of small amounts of private property is protected by the
Constitution," said cattleman Jaime Pulido, whose ranch has also been seized.
Peasant leaders have long argued that the real acreage of many ranches here
far exceeds the maximum 2,000 acres allowed by the Constitution. Furthermore,
crooked surveyors and corrupt officials have long falsified official reports
on the size of some land holdings or allowed people to list false names on
adjacent tracts to conceal ownership.
Peasants want the government to buy them the land, but most people here say
they're not interested in selling.
Seven people were killed Jan. 11 when 300 peasants seized the Chicomuselo
town hall. Armed ranchers and police drove them out with bullets and tear gas.
In the last two months, at least 10 peasants have been killed in violent
confrontations when landowners tried to retake their properties.
Source: The Associated Press.
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