By IPS Correspondents
MEXICO CITY, Jul 12 2005 (IPS)

The Zapatista guerrillas in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas are only the best-known insurgent group in the country, where at least a dozen other armed rebel groups are laying low.

Although the Mexican government says they pose no danger, observers warn that these small organisations are actively operating in the shadows, and could launch a surprise action at any moment.

One of these small groups, the previously unheard of Homeland Comes First Revolutionary People’s Armed Commando, claimed responsibility for the recent murder of a former prosecutor in the southwestern state of Guerrero.

The victim was considered to be the mastermind behind the 1995 massacre of a group of campesinos (peasant farmers).

"We call on the people of Mexico to restore the principle of justice, to bring an end to impunity and to punish those responsible for the neoliberal model of the dirty war, past and present," the group stated in a communiqué released Jul. 9, two days after the killing of the former prosecutor, which they say will not be the last.

Between 2000 and May of this year, a total of 23 individuals linked to armed organisations were arrested in Mexico, according to Defence Ministry reports.

Marcelo Riofrío, an expert on guerrilla movements, told IPS that insurgent groups actually do exist in Mexico and could turn out to be dangerous. "This is not a matter of rumours or theories. We are talking about people with weapons who use radical leftist discourse and are actively operating, but are in a phase of organisation and preparation."

Jorge Fernández, a journalist well versed on the subject, concurred with Riofrío. He believes that these groups have a "destabilising potential" beca use they have weapons and economic resources, obtained primarily through kidnapping, he said.

The Federal Agency of Investigations reports that there were 549 kidnappings in Mexico since 2002. However, numerous academic sources and social organisations maintain that the real number of kidnappings could be as much as ten times greater, because only one tenth of these crimes are reported to the police.

And some of the kidnappings, perhaps the least publicised ones, could have been carried out by armed groups.

In 2001, the leaders of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) publicly asked the "other" guerrilla groups in Mexico to provide them with freedom of movement and strategic support when they travelled from their base in Chiapas to Mexico City, to urge Congress to pass a bill on indigenous rights and autonomy.

The Zapatistas originally burst on the scene on Jan. 1, 1994, demanding justice for Mexico’s indigenous people, and engaged in less than two weeks of skirmishes with army troops before the government of then president Carlos Salinas (1988-1994) declared a unilateral ceasefire.

Since then, they have devoted themselves to peaceful political and social activism. After several years away from the public spotlight, they re-emerged last month with a series of communiqués, announcing plans to tour the country with the goal of forging alliances with the "true" left.

A number of researchers have traced the origins of the EZLN to the National Liberation Forces (FLN), a Marxist-Leninist group that dissolved in the early 1980s. "Subcomandante Marcos", the most famous of the Zapatistas – although he claims that he is not the group’s leader – is widely believed to have been an FLN member.

Riofrío, a professor specialising in "social movements" at various Mexican educational institutions, maintains that other former FLN members either currently head or at least played in a role in the formation of other armed groups in Mexico.

While some of the FLN’s leaders broke away from the group altogether, others were posted to different locations around the country to organise a national armed uprising, according to historians.

A study by the Centre for Historical Research on Armed Movements states that representatives from all of the country’s armed groups reportedly met in 1993 in the central state of Puebla to draw up a strategy for joint struggle.

The conflicting views that emerged at this meeting were apparently what led the EZLN to make its "solo" debut in early 1994.

One of the groups that has openly differed with the Zapatistas is the People’s Revolutionary Army (EPR), which made its first public appearance in 1996 at an anniversary memorial service for the victims of a massacre in Aguas Blancas, Guerrero – the same mass killing in which the former prosecutor murdered last week was implicated.

The EPR, which subsequently went on to carry out a number of propaganda offensives and attacks on military and police detachments, criticised the EZLN for taking the wrong path by giving up armed struggle and negotiating with the government. (The peace talks between the Zapatistas and government officials broke off in 1996).

The group also claimed that EZLN spokesman Subcomandante Marcos is not so much a guerrilla fighter as a writer and an expert at manipulating the media.

Internal struggles led to the break-up of the EPR in 2000 and the subsequent creation of the Insurgent People’s Revolutionary Army and other smaller groups, all with the expressed goal of waging war on "capitalism and imperialism" and promoting "popular struggle".

There is no precise information regarding the number of members in these various groups, and many have been hit in recent years by the arrests of their leaders. For the most part, they are made up of campesinos from poverty-stricken regions in the southern states of Guerrero and Oaxaca, which borders on Chiapas.

Writer Rogelio Montemayor, a self-declared admirer of the EZLN, believes there is every possibility of future armed offensives on the part of the country’s insurgent groups, given that the conditions that led to their creation – such as poverty, violence and repression – have continued to persist, especially in these three southern states.

Over the last nine years, close to a dozen armed insurgent groups have gone public in Mexico with a variety of relatively minor actions.

They include the People’s Revolutionary Forces, the Revolutionary Underground Committee of the Poor, the Revolutionary Democratic Tendency, the José María Morelos National Guerrilla Coordinator, the Morelos Jaramillista Commando, the Villista People’s Revolutionary Army, the Underground National Liberation Armed Forces, the Revolutionary Armed Commando of the South, the Revolutionary People’s Movement, and the most recent addition, the Homeland Comes First Revolutionary People’s Armed Commando, which made its public debut last week with the former prosecutor’s murder in Guerrero.

"I would not rule out the possibility that many of these groups actually exist and that at any moment, particularly as the (July 2006 presidential) elections draw closer, they could decide to undertake more significant actions," said Riofrío.

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