Mexicans mark 10th anniversary of 1997 massacre of 45 Indians in Chiapas

By Eduardo Verdugo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
AP Photo

12:19 a.m. December 19, 2007

MEXICO CITY – It's been nearly a decade since pro-government villagers armed with guns and machetes slaughtered 45 men, women and children in the neighboring hamlet of Acteal – a massacre that remains emblematic of Mexico's human rights failures.

At the time – Dec. 22, 1997 – Chiapas was the battleground where Zapatista rebels were trying to build support for their armed insurrection against the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which had ruled Mexico for seven decades. The army and the ruling party's local governor were determined to hold them back.

Authorities said the killings were motivated by a land dispute between residents of the two Tzotzil Indian communities. Victims' families say the killings were motivated by politics, with state officials providing weapons and paramilitary training for the more conservative village in a bid to crush the Zapatistas.