Freedom may not be far away. Last weekend the state government released 14 pro- Zapatista prisoners–many held on charges that prosecutors now admit were highly suspect–and continued to review several dozen more cases. The liberation is one of several measures Mexico’s new president, Vicente Fox, has undertaken to promote peace in Chiapas. After their 12-day offensive in 1994, the rebels, named for Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata, were pushed into a jungle stronghold. Fox, who toppled the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) after 71 years in power, once bragged that he could solve the conflict in 15 minutes. In his first month in office, he has already eliminated 53 Army checkpoints, sent an indigenous-rights bill to the legislature and shut down a key Army base. After 1996 peace negotiations failed, the rebels refused to talk with the PRI government. But with the PRI defeated, both at the national level and in Chiapas, the rebels have little choice but to bargain. The pipe-smoking leader known as Subcomandante Marcos has said that he may come to Mexico City, mask and all, in February to plead the indigenous cause before Congress.
Even if peace officially arrives in Chiapas, it could take years before communities settle their own accounts. The indigenous pop-ulation–about a third of the state’s 4 million people–is bitterly split over the rebels, with villages, and even families, divided between pro-Zapatista peasants and pro-PRI neighbors, some of whom have organized themselves into militias. It is unlikely that 50-year-old Gutierrez or 32-year-old Arias, even if they get out of prison, could go back to Tzanembolom, their fog-draped village, any time soon.
Hostilities among the peasants there first erupted into violence on the morning of Oct. 15, 1997. Armed men invaded, killing a 14-year-old boy and a 25-year-old man, both from families that supported the PRI and opposed the rebels. A militia chased Gutierrez and Arias and their families into the mountains. They eventually resettled in San Pedro Pohlo, one of 38 autonomous townships carved out by rebel supporters. Their two wives and 14 children are among the thousands of displaced people who live there, most without electricity or plumbing.
Witnesses interviewed by authorities in the few days after the killings didn’t finger Gutierrez or Arias. The first mention of either came three months later, from Geronimo Perez Gomez, the dead 14-year-old’s uncle. He told court officials that while he didn’t see the attackers, he was sure that Gutierrez was among them. Last week he told NEWSWEEK that he had witnessed the whole thing, and that though the men were wearing masks, he could recognize them by their bodies. He said his nephew was killed “because he didn’t want to join the rebels.” During the interview Perez was coached by a village leader, Emilio Rodriguez Mendez. “Manuel and Antonio are assassins,” said Rodriguez.
Other evidence against Gutierrez and Arias is equally unconvincing. Seven months after the attack, two brothers of the 25-year-old victim testified that they had been hiding nearby and witnessed the killings. The brothers–who have since moved away–named 15 men with firearms, including Gutierrez and Arias. Lawyers for the prisoners and human-rights officials argue that paramilitary groups carried out the attack–and several others around the same time–to set up a pretext for the bloodiest violence since the conflict began: the December 1997 massacre of 45 rebel sympathizers in nearby Acteal.
Gutierrez and Arias remained free until a year ago, when they returned to Tzanembolom in a group of about 30 to check on their old coffee fields and houses. “We were afraid,” recalls Gutierrez. “Soldiers were living in my house.” The local police, tipped off about the arrest warrants, offered the group a ride back to Pohlo. Gutierrez and Arias, though, were eventually delivered to prison. They have been charged with murder, but no verdict has been issued by a judge.
They joined the Voice of Cerro Hueco, a group of self-declared political prisoners. In their dormitory, news articles about Fox and Marcos adorn a plywood board. “[The prisoners] are common criminals,” says Jose Guadalupe Arias, the prison director, “who happen to be supporters of the Zapatistas.” Still waiting for a three-man panel to rule on their cases, Gutierrez and Arias are skeptical that they will be allowed to return home. Arias says he sometimes thinks about the 25-year-old he is accused of murdering: “I don’t know who killed him. I wasn’t there.” He says the people of Tzanembolom used to live together in peace. But not even a democratic government and the prospect of an unmasked Marcos can undo the damage from a conflict that has become intensely personal.
