Marchers Carry Bricks, Candles To Site Of Massacre Plan To Build Chapel, Demand Officials Be Punished

About 400 Indians marched Wednesday to this southern hamlet where gunmen massacred 45 villagers last week, many demanding punishment for government officials they accuse of complicity in the attack.

Marchers in straw hats and sandals, lugging their belongings in coffee sacks from a nearby village bloated with refugees, carried candles, yellow chrysanthemums and signs demanding the killers be arrested.

“The governor must be asked why this is happening. He wants to solve problems with guns. Let’s hope the investigation reaches those politically responsible,” said the Rev. Felipe Toussaint of the local Roman Catholic diocese.

Arriving in Acteal, site of the Dec. 22 slaughter, the marchers followed a narrow, steep path to a clearing in front of the chapel, the same route the killers took, and made a cross of candles.

Juan Perez Mendez, home for the first time since the massacre, put his hand to his forehead and gazed with wide eyes at the stream where his 16-year-old sister was killed.

“It’s very sad. My soul aches. They fired three shots at me but missed. But my little sister died and that’s why I’m so sad,” said the 20-year-old farmer.

Perez planned to go back to Polho, just 1-1/2 miles away. He said he wouldn’t return home “until the murderers are in jail.”

But 21 refugee families planned to spend the night in the village, then decide whether they felt safe enough to remain, Toussaint said.

Authorities have arrested 40 people, including the county’s top political official, Jacinto Arias Cruz, for alleged roles in the massacre in the poor southern state of Chiapas.

But survivors believe other higher-ranking members of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party must have been involved, and opposition leaders have called for the ouster of state Gov. Julio Cesar Ruiz Ferro and Interior Secretary Emilio Chuayffet.

The victims of the massacre in Acteal belonged to a group that sympathizes with leftist Zapatista rebels, whose political influence has grown in the mostly indigenous region since peace talks with the government broke down in 1996.

Women, some carrying babies, wore black skirts and colorfully embroidered shirts as the procession left Polho, where 6,000 refugees are camped out. Men in white tunics accompanied them along the winding mountain road overlooking lush, rolling hills.

All are Tzotzil Indians and many do not speak Spanish.

“We want the killers to go away,” said Jose Arias Guzman, a nephew of the arrested county leader and a day laborer in coffee and corn fields. “We want the political leaders to leave so that life can be better.”

Arias Guzman, who helped returning refugees load sacks of clothing into a truck, was among the few Acteal residents who remained in the town after the massacre, which he said he survived by running into the hills.

Accusations the killers were linked to local ruling party officials gained credibility with Tuesday’s arrest of the county government’s representative in the neighboring hamlet of Los Chorros, home to many of the alleged killers.

Chiapas state spokesman Fermin Rodriguez confirmed the arrest of the official, Antonio Santiz Encin.

One of the suspects, whose name was not released, told investigators that Santiz organized and supplied arms for the paramilitary gang believed responsible, Mexican media reported.

Santiz purchased 18 K-47s in preparation for the attack and the killers met daily at his house in days leading up to the slayings, according to the reports, which the federal attorney general’s office said it was investigating.

Both Santiz and Arias Cruz have denied detailed knowledge of PRI-affiliated paramilitary groups that have terrorized many villages in the region since March.

Survivors say the Dec. 22 attack was carried out by PRI supporters, and many of the detainees have said they are PRI members.

State officials either have denied the existence of the paramilitary groups, or said they were justified in the wake of the January 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, in which 145 people died.

The federal government has said it didn’t know about the problems.

Supporters of the Zapatista rebels have set up a parallel local government in Polho, where refugees terrified of further paramilitary killings have gathered since last weekend.

The refugees come from communities where they said paramilitary groups levied “war taxes” and harassed anyone who refused to back the PRI.

They distrust the police and military and on Tuesday night formed a human chain to prevent soldiers from entering Polho in trucks.

Before Wednesday’s march, hundreds sat in and around Polho’s schoolhouse, children coughing in the morning damp, girls braiding their mothers’ hair.

Pots of beans cooked on wood fires, but people said they didn’t have enough to eat.

“We’re not doing very well,” said Rafael Gomez Perez, a 23-year-old farmer from Acteal. “We don’t have anything to eat. People are sick, there’s fever.”