Chiapas Mexico

The government of Mexico released three Zapatista sympathizers Thursday who were sentenced to eight years in prison in the southern state of Chiapas. Rafael Lopez Satis, Gustavo Estrada and Alejandro Mendez had been found guilty of drug trafficking, weapon violations and criminal association. Their release was the latest attempt by President Vicente Fox to bring the Zapatista rebels back to the negotiating table.

A strong earthquake rattled southern Mexico, shattering windows and sending scared residents running from their homes. No injuries were immediately reported. The magnitude 6.4 quake was centered along the Pacific coast of the southern state of Chiapas, according to the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.

A judge in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas has released six paramilitary members convicted of taking part in the 1997 massacre of 45 rebel sympathizers, officials said. The prisoners were convicted of killing 45 Zapatista sympathizers on Dec. 22 while the victims prayed at a chapel in Acteal, a small village 460 miles southeast of Mexico City.

Almost four years after 45 peasants were massacred by paramilitary gunmen, hundreds of Mexican Indians returned to their homes in the southern state of Chiapas on Tuesday, still demanding that all the killers be brought to justice.

Thirteen members of a leftist group accused of killing peasants over a land dispute were arrested in a predawn police raid near Tuxtla Gutierrez, authorities said. The suspects, members of a group known as the House of the People, were arrested Monday in Venustiano Carranza, about 45 miles southeast of Tuxtla Gutierrez, the Chiapas state capital, Atty. Gen. Mariano Herran Salvatti said.

In an effort to salvage peace in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico's Congress voted to let Zapatista rebels speak before lawmakers to promote an Indian rights bill. Legislators passed a measure requiring at least 100 members of the 628-seat Congress to be present when the rebels make their pitch. Rebel leader Subcommander Marcos said the Zapatistas accepted Congress' proposal and would postpone their return to the jungle, which had been scheduled for today.

It didn't take long for the euphoria over the Chiapas rebels' peaceful caravan journey through Mexico to give way to insults, suspicion and hardball politics. The 16-day motorized march by the 24 commanders of the Zapatista National Liberation Army ended Sunday in Mexico City's main square, the Zocalo, with a rally that was more Woodstock than the revolution the Zapatistas envisioned when they rose up Jan. 1, 1994.

Ski-masked leaders of Mexico's Zapatista guerrillas met Monday with congressional mediators in the first serious attempt in nearly five years to address the demands that spurred the rebels' 1994 uprising in the southern state of Chiapas. Subcommander Marcos and 23 fellow commanders of the Zapatista National Liberation Army huddled behind closed doors with federal legislators in a university building in the Mexican capital to begin lobbying for Indian rights legislation.

Rebel leader Subcommander Marcos on Thursday took his campaign for indigenous rights into the heartland of the Mexican Revolution, placing a floral wreath on the spot where peasant hero Emiliano Zapata was assassinated 82 years ago. On the 13th day of a 2,100-mile trek from his base in the southern state of Chiapas to the nation's capital, Marcos pointedly followed Zapata's famous trail in the central state of Morelos.

Rebel leader Subcommander Marcos handed over his assault rifle and silver-plated revolver and left his jungle stronghold here Saturday on a risk-filled 2,000-mile caravan to Mexico City, raising hopes of an end to the seven-year-long Zapatista uprising and of greater rights for all of this country's indigenous peoples.