WHO IS BEHIND THE VIOLENCE IN CHIAPAS?
Chiapas’s history demonstrates that the federal government has never been able to control state politics. The national social reforms sparked by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20) were successfully opposed in Chiapas by the Mapaches–a local armed group backed by large landholders. Later, large landowners obtained special “ineffectability” status that protected their landholdings from redistribution under Cardenas’s agrarian legislation. In the late 1950s, Chiapas governor Leon Brindis passed legislation permitting cattle ranchers to hire their own private police forces to protect their land holdings–this was the beginning of the White Guards. Most analysts of Chiapan politics believe that the current state government is not committed to a peaceful solution to the conflict. A report by CONPAZ describes two main power groups within the existing government. Under the current interim governor Julio Cesar Ruiz Ferro there is a soft-line group that is more given to negotiations. In this fact
