Police Accused Of Murder In Slaying Of 17 Peasants

Two police commanders and eight officers in the southern state of Guerrero have been charged with murder in the shooting deaths of 17 peasants who were headed to an anti-government rally.

The charges filed Saturday appear to back reports by survivors that police ambushed and fired on a bus carrying the peasants to a protest Wednesday sponsored by the leftist Democratic Revolution Party.

In response, angry peasants set fire Saturday night to the town hall in Coyuca de Benitez to protest the slayings of fellow members of the Peasant Organization of the Southern Sierra. The town is 15 miles from the Pacific port of Acapulco.

“Because the color of blood is never forgotten,” peasant leader Benigno Guzman Martinez intoned. “Who will avenge these deaths?”

“The people!” shouted the crowd of thousands.

State Attorney General Antonio Alcocer Salazar, who filed the murder and abuse of authority charges, denied that an ambush had occurred, saying the peasants were armed.

Officials earlier said the peasants attacked police with gunfire and machetes when their bus was stopped at a checkpoint at Coyuca de Benitez, and the state government released a photograph showing a dead peasant with a pistol in his hand.

But the El Sol de Mexico newspaper on Saturday published two photographs taken by an employee that appeared to indicate the gun was placed in the man’s hand after the massacre.