MARQUES DE COMILLAS, Mexico — Like many of those living in grinding poverty deep in the rebel-controlled jungles of southern Mexico, Elias Guillen got tired of waiting for life to get better. So he voted with his feet.
A decade after the Zapatista movement took over swaths of Chiapas and shook Mexico's political establishment, life in Guillen's corner of the southern state has not improved. Public services there remain nonexistent. None of his nine children, ages 12 to 31, ever learned to read, partly because of a Zapatista decree banning government assistance in the area.
When the federal Agrarian Reform Ministry offered the poor people living in his hamlet the chance to relocate to this settlement with electricity, streets and a schoolhouse, 26 families, including Guillen's, jumped at the offer.
"When the Zapatistas started, they talked about things no one had heard about: liberty, land, shelter and jobs. They said they would take us out of poverty, but in 10 years the results are almost nothing," said Guillen, 56. "Many people have stopped believing."
Desertions by people like Guillen are believed to be a factor in the rebels' releasing a series of communiques this week. The statements culminated Wednesday with a declaration by the movement's enigmatic leader, Subcommander Marcos, that the rebels would end a decade of armed isolation and embark on a more open, traditional political path.
The departures are part of a trend that has seen larger numbers of Chiapas residents migrate to the United States. Over the last decade, Chiapas has moved from near the bottom to 11th place among the 31 Mexican states and the federal capital in remittances from immigrants in the U.S., according to the Bank of Mexico.
"Since 2002 there has been a huge increase of people from Chiapas who have left for the United States," said Pablo Romo, founder of the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Center for Human Rights, a group based in San Cristobal de las Casas that advocates for the rights of indigenous people. "There is a tension created by unfulfilled promises."
But many, like Guillen, are simply moving elsewhere in Chiapas, looking to escape the rebels' puritanical ideology, communal land policy, militarism and prohibition of government services.
Guillen's new home in the southeast corner of the state, 130 miles from his former village of San Francisco de Caracol, isn't ideal. The land is infertile as well as remote. His first crop of corn and beans failed.
