Can Chiapas Change? Garance Burke,
Mother Jones
After Vicente Fox toppled the long-ruling PRI party in Mexico’s
presidential elections, voters in the battle-scarred state of
Chiapas elected their own opposition governor, Pablo Salazar,
leader of a center-left coalition. As Garance Burke ofMother
Jones finds, Zapatista rebels and sympathetic citizens are
tempering their hopes with realism, knowing that the province’s
chronic low intensity warfare will probably not end soon. Salazar
claims that he will make taking Chiapas out of a climate of war a
priority, but pro-government vigilantes like the ‘Peace and
Justice’ paramilitary group, who had received millions of dollars
in ‘development funds’ from the state in years past and now feel
abandoned by the system, will undoubtedly react violently to such
changes. — Amanda Luker
Go there>>