Massacres Mexico

State lawmakers in Guerrero have exonerated the governor of any wrongdoing in last year's massacre of 17 peasants at a state police roadblock, the state attorney general's office has announced. Lawmakers rejected a motion to impeach Gov. Ruben Figueroa, the Notimex news agency reported over the weekend. Figueroa represents the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, which also dominates the legislature. Figueroa went on an indefinite leave of absence in March.

At least 24 people were massacred in an ambush linked to a possible clan feud in a remote mountain area north of this Pacific coast resort, police said Wednesday. About 50 gunmen opened fire on two trucks carrying 40 family members who were going to a funeral late Tuesday near the village of Huahuautla, authorities said. Police said a drug-trafficking dispute or a fight over land rights between two families may have been behind the massacre.

The scandal rocking Mexico this week is known here simply as "White Water." But unlike its American counterpart, it does not trace back to a failed rural development and the president here has cast himself in a lead role--for reform. Aguas Blancas, or White Water, is the name of a small village in Guerrero state where police fired on a group of peasants on June 28, killing 17 of them.

Climaxing a scandal that has outraged Mexicans and international human rights groups, a prominent ruling party governor was forced to resign Tuesday as authorities investigated his alleged role in the massacre of 17 left-wing peasants. The resignation of Gov. Ruben Figueroa, an important supporter of President Ernesto Zedillo in the southwestern state of Guerrero, appeared to defuse a crisis that had grown increasingly embarrassing for the president.

Dozens of gunmen fired on churchgoers who were praying for peace in a remote Mexican village, killing at least 45 people--including 14 children and a baby--in a brutal escalation of the 4-year-old conflict in the southern state of Chiapas, officials confirmed Tuesday.

In a major step to resolve the ongoing conflict in the southern state of Chiapas, President Ernesto Zedillo on Saturday replaced his interior minister--considered his top political operator--and ordered a new peace strategy for the impoverished region.

Protesters burned down the town hall of this southwestern Mexican village Saturday, even as officials announced the arrest of two police commanders and eight agents for killing 17 peasants here last week. Members of the left-wing Southern Sierra Peasant Organization, to which the dead belonged, set the town hall on fire after a speech by former presidential candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas in which he called for a full investigation, radio reports said.

Residents in Chiapas state attacked 200 federal police officers who were launching an offensive to arrest a group of alleged paramilitaries charged with the 1997 massacre of 45 peasants, forcing the troops to flee. Two officers and three Indian residents suffered minor injuries in the melee in Los Chorros, a small village near Acteal where the massacre occurred. The region of southern Mexico has seen numerous clashes between leftist Zapatista rebels and pro-government armed bands.

While the government may consider the recent massacre of 45 peasants in Chiapas an outgrowth of local feuds, the bloodstained southern state represents to many analysts the dark side of Mexico's political transition, one of many examples of old power structures disintegrating--and being replaced by chaos, not democracy.

Roman Catholic Bishop Samuel Ruiz sought Thursday to console the people of the southern Mexican state of Chiapas with a Christmas message that grappled with this week's massacre of 45 unarmed villagers. But the cleric, who is one of Mexico's best-known religious figures and a champion of the rights of indigenous people in this impoverished region, also didn't disguise his anger over the relentless bloodshed in his diocese as he buried the dead.