Mexico Police Fire on Protesters

By TRINA KLEIST, Associated Press Writer
01/13/1998 04:50 EST

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico (AP) -- Tensions spilled over into bloodshed in southern Chiapas state when police opened fire on a crowd marching for peace, killing a woman and wounding her tiny daughter and a 17-year-old boy.

The government arrested 27 officers and announced an overhaul of the state police system, but tens of thousands of people demonstrating across Mexico were demanding more: the punishment of federal officials and peace with a 4-year-old rebel movement.

The shooting Monday in Ocosingo -- a town 40 miles northeast of San Cristobal -- raised fears the tensions that have engulfed Chiapas state since the Dec. 22 massacre of 45 Indian peasants sympathetic to the rebels could explode into violence.

Several thousand people were demonstrating in Ocosingo to protest the massacre in the village of Acteal and to demand the resumption of stalled peace talks with the rebels. Tens of thousands of others were marching across Mexico in similar protests.

Hundreds of people also jammed one of Los Angeles' busiest intersections Monday to protest what they claim is U.S. involvement in the Acteal massacre. A protest flier charged that the U.S. government supplied weapons to Mexico's government.

The demonstration in Ocosingo had just ended and people were setting out on foot to return to their villages when they met up with police at a gas station at the edge of town.

Videotape broadcast on Azteca Television showed the demonstrators lobbing rocks in the direction of police and yelling at them to leave the area.

State police officers dressed in black fired tear gas and when the crowd didn't move, they fired warning shots in the air. Then some of the officers lowered the barrels of their automatic rifles into the crowd.

Demonstrators ran for cover as the police fired for about 15 seconds, then fled in a truck. Protesters threw rocks at the truck, and police inside opened up with another volley of gunfire.

When they were gone, 38-year-old Guadalupe Mendez Lopez lay dying. Her 2-year-old daughter, Isabel, was wounded in the left arm and 17-year-old Lazaro Lopez Vazquez had a bullet in his stomach. A TV crew took them to a hospital in nearby Altamirano, where Mendez Lopez was pronounced dead.

For many Mexicans watching the violence -- and seeing increasing evidence that state officials were involved in the Acteal massacre -- the police arrests and plans to overhaul their department came too late.

In Mexico City, about 80,000 demonstrators heard the news from Ocosingo over a loudspeaker set up in the central Zocalo square. They had been demonstrating for peace in Chiapas and justice in the massacre.

``Zedillo, murderer of women and children,'' they chanted.

``Mexico has an open wound,'' said Eugenia Ogarrio, 45, who wore a white dress and painted her face as a skull. ``Our rulers are killing their people.''

In a related development, Labastida Ochoa appointed Emilio Rebasa Gamboa on Monday as the new coordinator for the government negotiating team in peace talks with the rebels.

Rebasa Gamboa, descendent of a 19th-century Chiapas governor, replaces Pedro Joaquin Coldwell, who came on board after talks broke down in September 1996. The rebels pulled out, accusing the government of refusing to implement a partial peace accord signed in February 1996.

Since then, clashes between rebel supporters and pro- government paramilitary groups have escalated, claiming more than 100 lives and displacing more than 11,000 Indian peasants, mostly rebel sympathizers.

Also Monday, the federal attorney general's office revealed the first evidence linking state officials to the massacre: the testimony of a local police commander who it said claimed he was following orders from superiors in the state police when he delivered weapons used in the attack.

Authorities have yet to name any state officials as suspects or say which ``superiors'' allegedly gave the orders to get the guns.

Copyright 1998 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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