THE WAGES OF REBELLION

By Michael S. Serrill

Little more than a year ago in Chiapas state, the eruption of the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army triggered national turmoil. Renewed militancy there last month was widely seen as contributing to the wrecking of the peso and the loss of billions of dollars around the world. Whatever the global reaction, in Chiapas the small band of rebels has reason to be awed at the impact of its efforts. Army units were rushed in not only to combat the rebels but also to help improve the life of peasants by building clinics, schools and roads. Government public works projects picked up speed. President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon even resumed negotiations. Reacting to those talks, guerrilla leader Comandante Tacho may be forgiven if he sounds a bit smug when he declares, ``Mr. Zedillo has said positive things.''

What Zedillo announced in Mexico City last week was an accord among the country's four largest political parties that will ultimately loosen the hold on power of his Institutional Revolutionary Party, not only in Chiapas but also throughout the country. The document promises electoral reforms at both federal and state levels to put an end to corrupt campaign practices and fraudulent vote counts. It will also allow the election of Mexico City's mayor, until now chosen by the President. ``Mexico was the ugly duckling of democracy,'' exulted Interior Minister Esteban Moctezuma, as he waited for his car after the ceremony. ``That's all over.''

The document made no mention of it, but the p.r.i.'s stranglehold in the poor southern states of Chiapas and neighboring Tabasco may also be at an end. Part of the reported price for the accord's endorsement by the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution was Zedillo's promise to hold new elections in Chiapas and Tabasco, where opposition parties have protested, often violently, electoral fraud. But if a new election deal was struck, it immediately backfired. Worried about the threat to their dominance, p.r.i. supporters in Tabasco took to the streets, blocking highways and clashing with p.r.d. militants.The demonstrators urged the p.r.i. state governor Roberto Madrazo to resist any effort to remove him from office.

Meanwhile in Chiapas, the new round of talks began between the Zapatistas, led by ski-masked Subcomandante Marcos, and a government delegation headed by Interior Minister Moctezuma. After a four-hour meeting, the government agreed to pull several hundred occupying troops out of two villages sympathetic to the rebel cause, while the Zapatistas agreed to extend a truce indefinitely. The two sides remained far apart on an accord to end the uprising, though.

Whatever subsequent talks may bring, Chiapas' insurgency has already earned it more attention from Mexico City than it received in the previous five centuries. In recent months, some 60,000 to 70,000 soldiers in the state have brought in mobile health clinics and distributed food to local peasants, the country's poorest. Land reform promised since the revolution of 1910 is finally being implemented: last week the state government announced that a privately held 5,000-hectare hacienda in the southerly Lacandon rain forest was broken up and handed over to peasants. ``It's a very important first step toward solving the worst problem in Chiapas--land,'' says government spokesman Juan Chavez.

All across the hardscrabble state, federal largesse is being ladled out with a generous hand. In the dusty mountain village of San Miguel de Ocosingo, farmer Jacinto Mendoza Lorenzo proudly displays a pair of brand new, apple-green John Deere tractors parked in front of his thatched hut. The vehicles were purchased by Mendoza's ejido, or communal farm, on easy-credit terms arranged by the government. Gazing at the precious tractors, Mendoza says, ``We're interested in working, and the government seems to be interested in helping us do that.''

The bright notes do not mean that most peasants welcomed the face-off between the guerrillas and the army. For many it has brought harsh treatment from the occupying forces. In San Andres Larrainzar, one of the rebel- infiltrated towns where the army withdrew its troops last week, residents consider both sides equally repressive. ``We just want to live in peace,'' says Miguel Lopez Gomez, an elder in the local church who wears the traditional wool tunic of the Tzotzil Indians. ``We want to work, pray, feed our families. We don't want any confrontations here.''

Still, the mood in much of the state is more upbeat than it has been in months. In one of the Zapatistas' jungle strongholds, the settlement of Guadalupe Tepeyac, Tacho praised Zedillo for the sincerity of his efforts. ``The most important factor,'' said the rebel, ``was that he sent his Interior Minister as his direct representative. That shows he's taking the problem seriously.'' The Zapatistas are relatively confident that their prime demand will be met: the removal from office of Eduardo Robledo, the p.r.i. governor whose August election--in the same balloting that elected Zedillo--was deemed fradulent by the rebels. With Zapatista backing, the losing p.r.d. candidate, Amado Avendano, has already been installed as symbolic head of a ``government in rebellion'' in San Cristobal de las Casas, the colonial state capital.

Other rebel demands--like the re- negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and a halt to the privatization of state industries--have less chance of success. ``There have to be great changes in this country,'' says Tacho's companion, Major Moises, an M-16 automatic rifle balanced on his lap. ``And if there's not, there's going to be war and revolution.''

Moises' rhetoric is overblown: the Zapatistas are thought to have a few hundred fighters at most, and few officials in Mexico City take such threats seriously. But neither, as they struggle to cope with the wreckage of Mexico's economy, can they dismiss the Chiapas rebels as irrelevant. The best the Zedillo government can hope for is to reduce the rebels' support through continued political and economic concessions. Given the region's poverty, that could take considerable time--and funds. ``I can't deny that more roads and schools are an advance,'' says Pablo Romo, an aide to Roman Catholic Bishop Samuel Ruiz, who is mediating the government-rebel talks. ``But most indigenous people here still have a painful existence. There is a long road ahead.''

With reporting by RONALD BUCHANAN/ GUADALUPE TEPEYAC AND LAURA LOPEZ/SAN CRISTOBAL