La Jornada Saturday, April 15, 2000.
Hermann Bellinghausen, correspondent. Amador Hernandez, Chiapas

Razing Trees, Overflights, Siege...
Yesterday the federal Army blocked, for the entire morning, the road that joins this community with San Quintin. It is the first time this has happened in the exactly eight months since this military camp was set up here. Since then, the stain of destruction brought by the military facilities has not stopped spreading. "They keep shooting and destroying the trees," Roberto reports, while we go around the camp in question, between the barbed wire fences that surround the heliport and the federal Army position.

"They've brought in more troops. And there are some who speak English and look like gringos," Roberto adds.

At the entrances to the coveted Montes Azules biosphere reserve, the soldiers have penetrated "by a road they made, some 600 meters inside the Selva," it is said.

Threats of Dislocation
One of Roberto's four companions, also wearing a ski-mask, tells how "they prevented a companero from passing by, who had his load on a mule, and he had to go back around the mountain in order to reach the community" a few hours ago.

When La Jornada visited the site of the blockade, it had already been lifted. Nonetheless, one could observe the increase in the area of ejidal land being occupied de facto by the federal troops.

While these "occupations" - swift, easily accomplished and so threatening to campesinos living in the reserve - in Montes Azules do not seem to bother the Semarnap, helicopters have begun continuous overflights above the communities.

Since April 10, several times a day the roofs of Pichucalco, Nuevo Pichucalco, Guanal, Amador Hernandez, Plan de Guadalupe and other Tzeltal villages, are shuddering from extremely low flights by the aircraft.

Threats of dislocation against those communities have increased. They have even been visited by judicial police and members of the Federal Preventive Police, informing them personally as to what might happen to them. EZLN support bases, as well as members of ARIC-Independent - who together represent all the Indians in this region - have, over the last few days, denounced the uncertain conditions they are being subjected to.

"They are just frightening the children with their helicopters," Roberto says.

"We're Looking For the EZLN"
The protest sit-in by EZLN support bases - in order to contain the soldiers' advance - has now completed eight months. Every day, since August 12, 1999, two hundred indigenous, men and women, children, adults and old ones, stand guard and demonstrate against the military camp. They march, shout slogans, send messages, sing, display banners. In response, as is known, opera is turned up to full volume. Roberto doesn't call this music now, but, simply, "interference."

In the same precarious conditions, accompanied at times by civil society, the indigenous stay up all night, exposed to the elements, in rotation. They come from innumerable communities and ranches in the Emiliano Zapata Autonomous Municipality and from the surrounding autonomous municipalities.

According to Roberto's story, the federal Army penetrates further every day into the biosphere reserve and onto ejidal lands. They are interfering with the farmworkers' roads and bridges. A few days ago the farmworkers took down a pedestrian bridge over the Perla River, since the soldiers were trying to occupy it.

In addition, the pond that belongs to a "ranchito" a kilometer from the camp is "taken over" daily by a squad, that goes there to "take baths."

Two days ago campesinos ran into a detachment of armed soldiers on a mountain road. "One of them, I didn't see his rank," Roberto says, "told us they were looking for the EZLN. That they wanted to find them."

And he adds: "They had gone out to provoke a confrontation."

The Selva, Under Siege
Following the appearance of military detente around chiapaneco cities, the military harassment in the interior of the Selva and the mountains is more tense and serious now. The agitation and anxiety of zapatista civilians on guard in the Selva is obvious. While out there in civilization it would seem that nothing is going on, here the situation is worrisome.

Seen from the air, the Canadas demonstrate the rapid proliferation of highways in all directions, like an advance guard for military positions. In a few months the military roads around the communities in resistance constitute a network of overwhelming "peripheral rings." In a few months the Army has advanced more than the indigenous did in 30 years of colonization.

In the military camp of Amador Hernandez, this correspondent could see numerous soldiers with hatchets and machetes (some with one in each hand), "working" the wood they have brought from the forests.

A high tower, bulwarked by sand bags, rises up alongside the trees, controlling the space between the Montes Azules and the fields. One of the two heliports is very active, Roberto notes, "bringing down more troops" from the aircraft. The other has had a change of role. The circle of about 150 meters in diameter, which was cut down to serve as a landing strip, today has two cement latrines planted right in the center, with seats and lids for toilets, and without any walls. In this way the users can have panoramic excretory sessions, which, in addition to being original, is also symbolic.

The streams look cloudy and contaminated, and the fecal odor extends around them, in spite of the eloquent sanitary facility. "They are contaminating everything," Roberto comments.

The federal Army's control of access to the Selva now also includes commercial air routes. This morning a soldier, in civilian dress, who said he was an envoy of the Military Region, tried to prevent the light aircraft in which this correspondent was travelling to Amador Hernandez from taking off in Comitan. He said we were not able to leave without his superiors being notified.

The flight was watched over by the military bases in Guadalupe Tepeyac, San Quintin and, for the first time, in Amador Hernandez, whose air controllers demanded, the same as they had in Comitan, that this journalist identify himself.

The Other Robert
Masked by Governor Roberto Albores' good will trips (who the day before yesterday distributed 1,000,600 Procampo pesos in the communities of Las Margaritas and Ocosingo, and who even dressed up in Tojolabal clothing in the Gonzalez de Leon ejido), the military occupation of the Selva Lacandona seems to be heading towards a critical point. Perhaps taking advantage of the fact that, given the heat of election fever, no one is looking in that direction.

Saying goodbye to La Jornada, Roberto (not Albores) and his companions, surrounded by the very alert families of the zapatista sit-in who were drinking posol and eating stale tostadas, insisted that I write two words in my notebook. After eight months of resistance, it said "we will continue to resist."

"Write it like that," he insisted. ""That is what we are saying."