BURY MY HEART AT ACTEAL
by Darrin Wood. Director, Nuevo Amanecer Press - Europe.

(this article won a Project Censored award for investigative reporting in 1999)

Every December, Native American rights activists remember and mourn the massacre carried out by the US Army at Wounded Knee. In 1890, hundreds of men, women and children were shot down on the snowy plains of South Dakota while offering Ghost Dance prayers, in the belief that bullets fired by the US Army's Seventh Cavalry Regiment wouldn't harm them.

Just over a hundred years later, a Mexican paramilitary group decided to carry out a reenactment of the massacre using live ammunition. In the village of Acteal, in the highlands of the state of Chiapas, dozens of men, women and children were shot down as they prayed, in the belief that the bullets fired by the paramilitaries wouldn't harm them. No doubt God has long since gone deaf from so much gunfire directed at praying Indians.

According to the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations, US President Bill Clinton "interfered in Mexican internal affairs" by demanding an exhaustive investigation into the massacre of the 45 indigenous men, women, and children in Acteal. A rather unfair remark on the part of Mexico given that in the New Neoliberal World Order one has the right to check up on their investments wherever they may be. And the US has invested heavily, through military training, in the war in Chiapas.

Last January, the Mexican news daily "El Financiero" published part of a recently declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document which stated that the Mexican Army "doesn't have the training or the resources" to carry out a guerrilla war against the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). The document was dated February 11th, 1995, just two days after Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo had ordered the Army on an offensive against the Zapatistas. In October of that same year the then Secretary of Defense William Perry traveled to Mexico in an official visit to try and find a way to remedy that.

In 1996, Mexican officers received nearly 150 courses at the US Army's School of the Americas (SOA), up from 24 the previous year. In 1997, the number more than doubled resulting in over 333 courses being taken by members of the Mexican military, more than a hundred of these being "Military Intelligence". In 1996, the US Army Special Forces also began a massive training program of Mexican Special Forces (GAFE - Airborne Special Forces Groups). From fiscal year 1996 until fiscal year 1999 around 3,200 Mexican soldiers will receive training in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, by the Green Berets' 7th Special Forces Group (the same ones who brought you all those "democratic freedom fighting" human rights abuses in Honduras and El Salvador in the 1980's). The program allegedly forms part of the "War on Drugs" led by ex- SOUTHCOM head honcho Barry McCaffrey. Sounds nice but...

The Mexican news agency APRO reported on December 25th that "An important detachment, composed of members of the [Mexican Army] Airborne Special Forces Groups (GAFE) was sent to the community of Acteal, in the municipality of Chenalho, where this past Monday "a paramilitary group linked to the PRI" carried out the biggest massacre in recent years in Chiapas, leaving a total of 46 dead and 25 wounded, the majority being women and children.
The soldiers of the GAFE, experts in counterinsurgency and specialized in operating in rough terrain as can be found in Chiapas, immediately set up three roadblocks on the highway that leads from the Chenalho to Acteal in order to meticulously search all vehicles which passed through the troubled area."

Oddly enough, on december 26th, the Mexican daily LA JORNADA published an article on a recent operation of the GAFE in the state of Jalisco where more than a dozen young men were kidnapped and tortured. One of the youths, Salvador Lopez Jimenez, died as a result of this "Special Forces" action. LA JORNADA states that "The judge of this jurisdiction has ordered that charges be brought against Lieutenant Colonel Julian Guerrero Barrios and Captain Rogelio Solis Aguilar, who are accused of the crime of violence against the people, as authors of homicide." The article states that 15 other soldiers will be charged in the cover-up but no names were given.

It should come as no surprise that Lt. Col. Julian Guerrero Barrios is a graduate of the US Army's School of the Americas - SOA, which he attended in 1981 in a course titled "Commando Operations". Time to add another photo in the SOA's "Hall of Fame". We do not know yet how many other of those charged have received training recently at Fort Bragg but the Pentagon recently admitted that some of those arrested had been there.

The Special Forces training the GAFE receive at Fort Bragg allegedly includes "Human Rights" instruction but that doesn't seem to have had much effect on the men under Col. Guerrero Barrios' command. According to an article about the kidnappings and torture in Jalisco by Mari'a Rivera, published in the "Masiosare" supplement of the Mexican daily LA JORNADA on January 18th :

"From all the water that the force into him, from so many blows, Ricardo Sa'nchez begins to vomit blood. But the worst is still to come. The hooded men who kidnapped him along with 19 other youths from San Juan de Ocota'n, a Nahua indian village about half an hour away from Guadalajara, are going to give him a special treatment: they puncture his feet with two large nails. Ricardo wakes up freezing to death. His kidnappers have thrown him by the bank of the road. He doesn't know how lucky he is. The luck that Salvador Jime'nez Lo'pez lacked, another of the youths kidnapped by members of the Fifth Military Region and who died by drowning in his own blood because, when they tired of beating him, they cut his tongue."

The mastermind behind Mexico's counterinsurgency strategy in Chiapas from late 1994 until November of 1997, General Mario Renan Castillo Fernandez, had received instruction in "Psychological Warfare" at Fort Bragg as well. The general, now the ex commander of the Mexican Army's 7th Military Region in Chiapas, has recently been pointed out as having served as an "Honorary Witness" at a ceremony where the state government of Chiapas handed over half a million dollars to the paramilitary group "Paz y Justicia".

A recent article in the newsweekly "Proceso" revealed two interesting documents prepared by the 7th Military Region in Chiapas. The first one, titled "Campaign Plan Chiapas 94", laid out the groundwork for the counterinsurgency strategy which included stated that "it is necessary to create" paramilitary groups in order to defeat the EZLN. Half a year later, "Paz y Justicia" began operating, with general Castillo Fernandez in now in command of the 7th Military Region.

The other document mentioned by "Proceso" is a political, sociological, economic, and religious study of Chiapas prepared by Mexican general Jose Ruben Rivas Pe~a. The study blames Catholic Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia as being responsible for the current problems. General Rivas Pe~a graduated from the "Command and General Staff" course at the School of the Americas in 1980.

In early April, a soldier belonging to the Mexican Army's 83rd Infantry Batallion, Mariano Perez Ruiz, was arrested and charged with training and giving weapons to some of those who took part in the Acteal massacre. Since before the Zapatista uprising in January of 1994, the 83rd has been commanded by SOA trained officers. Immediately following the massacre, the 83rd was transferred out of the state of Chiapas with no official explanation being given. Some reports have stated that many of the soldiers in that Batallion are from the municipality of Chenalho, where Acteal is located, and might be related to the paramilitaries.

The US trained officers related to the latest Wounded Knee aren't just limited to Mexican officers. In early January, the Mexican daily "Cronica de Hoy" published an investigation which linked a group of officers of the Guatemalan Army to the traffic of arms to paramilitary groups in Chiapas. Two of the members of the Guatemalan military who show up in the "Cronica" investigation are graduates of the School of the Americas. They are: Colonel Jose Luis Fernandez Ligorria (1989 - Command and General Staff) and Lt. Colonel Carlos Rene Ochoa Ruiz (1969 - C-3).

On March 3rd, Barbara Larkin, the Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs at the US State Department, responded to inquiry by Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy concerning the Mexican military and US aid to them. In that letter, the State Department declares that "we are aware of no information that the Mexican Army participated in any way" in the massacre at Acteal. Obviously the State Department doesn't read their own Human Rights Reports. The chapter on Mexico in the latest report, released on January 30th, states that:

"Some large landowners and local political bosses in Chiapas state maintain private militias to defend their property from peasant land invasions and to intimidate local opposition. This problem is especially acute in some northern regions of the state, where the group Development, Peace, and Justice ("Desarrollo, Paz y Justicia"), headed by autonomous local political bosses loosely affiliated with the PRI, is based. A number of local armed groups, including Peace and Justice and the "Chinchulines," reportedly banded together to form an anti-Zapatista indigenous front. State authorities do not effectively impede the establishment of these militias, which reportedly often employ police and military personnel. In December there were press reports that the Chiapas state government provided financial assistance to the Peace and Justice group in August, under the auspices of agrarian reform."

It seems as if the State Department doesn't consider training and arming as "participating" in the massacre. Or, perhaps they are just trying to elude their own responsibilities in the latest Indian War.

Acteal can be reached by going from the 7th Cavalry to the 7th Military Region by way of the 7th Special Forces Group. 777. You just have to add the 111 municipalities that exist in Chiapas to the Number of the Beast to get that number.

Bury my heart at Acteal.