Mexico Military Assaults

Marxist guerrillas opened fire on an army anti-drug patrol at dawn Sunday in a village outside Acapulco, and the soldiers killed 11 rebels in the ensuing six-hour firefight, the Defense Ministry said. The incident was the first significant violence involving Mexico's second-largest rebel movement, the Popular Revolutionary Army, since May 1997, when nine people in the region were killed in a series of attacks by the group.

Back in the 1970s, just bearing the name Cabanas invited torture, disappearance and death in the villages of the blood-splashed Sierra Madre of Guerrero state. Lucio Cabanas Barrientos, a Mexican version of Che Guevara, was a country teacher-turned-revolutionary leader who built up a small rebel army in the mountains that loom above his hometown here. He was killed Dec. 2, 1974, in an army ambush soon after kidnapping the governor-elect of the southern state.

After months of lying low, Mexico's newest rebel group has reappeared in a series of clashes with the army in recent days that has killed nine people and raised fears of renewed violence. Officials said Wednesday that about 25 gunmen had attacked soldiers searching for drugs a day earlier near Atoyac de Alvarez, about 40 miles northwest of Acapulco. One soldier was killed, an army bulletin said. When soldiers later tried to remove his body, they were reportedly ambushed again.

Marxist guerrillas opened fire on an army anti-drug patrol at dawn Sunday in a village outside Acapulco, and the soldiers killed 11 rebels in the ensuing six-hour firefight, the Defense Ministry said. The incident was the first significant violence involving Mexico's second-largest rebel movement, the Popular Revolutionary Army, since May 1997, when nine people in the region were killed in a series of attacks by the group.

Back in the 1970s, just bearing the name Cabanas invited torture, disappearance and death in the villages of the blood-splashed Sierra Madre of Guerrero state. Lucio Cabanas Barrientos, a Mexican version of Che Guevara, was a country teacher-turned-revolutionary leader who built up a small rebel army in the mountains that loom above his hometown here. He was killed Dec. 2, 1974, in an army ambush soon after kidnapping the governor-elect of the southern state.

After months of lying low, Mexico's newest rebel group has reappeared in a series of clashes with the army in recent days that has killed nine people and raised fears of renewed violence. Officials said Wednesday that about 25 gunmen had attacked soldiers searching for drugs a day earlier near Atoyac de Alvarez, about 40 miles northwest of Acapulco. One soldier was killed, an army bulletin said. When soldiers later tried to remove his body, they were reportedly ambushed again.