For the second time in two weeks, the Mexican Army patrol that covers the area around Las Margaritas, between the barracks at Guadalupe Tepeyac and Nueva Providencia, 'set up an ambush' at the edge of the Euseba River, in an area about 10 kilometres from La Realidad, the Tojolabal village in which Subcomandante Marcos was last seen on January 11.
The denouncement was made by residents of the community, who took this reporter to the place where government troops spent the night on Wednesday January 22, hidden in the deep vegetation.
After pointing out the marks left by the tires of the combat vehicles in a clearing that the soldiers used for parking, the campesinos pointed out 'the caves' that the soldiers opened using machetes in the undergrowth to create space for their sleeping bags.
Along with this evidence, this reporter found a empty box of cornflakes, four plastic bottles with remains of milk, one and a half dozen soda bottles, as well as a old yellow plastic container, with two cracks in its base, and on one side of which was stamped '5 US Gallons'.
The discovery of this new 'military exercise' close to La Realidad coincides with the warning that Subcomandante Marcos made on Friday January 24th in which he said that the government's troops 'were practising over and over a surgical attack' against the general command of the EZLN, which has not been denied to-date by the military's high command.
*Diplomacy and surgery*
To begin the third week of the so-called 'crisis within the crisis' of the dialogue in Chiapas, the Mexican Army has consolidated, in at least four of the seven areas of the jungle, a military deployment without precedent, that in the opinion of some observers of the conflict in this city, is part of 'a containment plan' whose objective is 'to inhibit whatever possible offensive movement' by the indigenous rebels, by means of this showy exhibition of force by land and air.
In the area of the Patihuitz, which goes from Ocosingo to San Quintin, 'for every Zapatista community there are two camps' of the Mexican Army, said a source tied to the National Commission of Mediation (Conai). However, 'everywhere one finds very amiable officials, and in San Quintin, where the largest military base in the jungle is located, the greatest concern of the general in charge is how to organize basketball tournaments among the indigenous people.'
The people, he stated, 'are very upset because there has never been so many troops, but at the same time, they don't know what to think because the soldiers are helping to get the coffee harvest out by helicopter, and they aren't charging for this service'.
According to a report, Violence and militarization in Chiapas, by the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Centre, before this military deployment the Mexican Army had 28 camps in the jungle: 19 in the municipality of Ocosingo, 7 in the municipality of Las Margaritas and two in the municipality of Altamirano.
Based on conservative estimates, if each camp has 500 soldiers -as estimated in the article by Juan Balboa last week -the total number of soldiers who have been mobilized, just in the jungle, is at least 14,000, a figure that has risen even higher in the past few critical days with the arrival of 6,000 cadets, who will be conducting 'social service' tasks during the next three months.
For other observers, the containment plan implemented by the armed forces does not contradict, but rather complement, the plans for a 'surgical attack' denounced by Marcos and supported by the belief that with the elimination of the movement's leadership, the rebel bases would surrender and the problem would be resolved.
'This would be a huge error', warned Julio Moguel, a specialist in agrarian issues, who stated that 'the eventual assassination of Marcos would provoke an unimaginable effect. In a few days chaos would reign, and to regain control of the situation the government would have to pay the political cost of a great bloodbath, not counting possible international reprisals, because it should not be forgotten that in many communities of the jungle there are foreign observers, the majority of whom come from Europe and the United States.
La Jornada, January 27, 1996 Second practice of 'ambush' by the Mexican Army Jaime Aviles, correspondent, San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, January 26