Zapatista rebels reportedly stepping up military training, recruitment in
Chiapas state

ASSOCIATED PRESS
8:34 a.m. March 22, 2004

MEXICO CITY - Zapatista rebels have erected a dozen new military training
camps in the southern state of Chiapas and have almost tripled the number of
recruits, the newspaper Reforma reported Monday, citing an unpublished
report by Mexican security agencies.

The Zapatistas, who rose up in arms in 1994 to demand Indian rights, have
boosted the number of camps from 8 to 20 and military recruits from an
estimated 700 to around 2,000, according to the report.

They are also taking fewer pains to hide the camps, locating one in plain
view of a two-lane highway, according to Reforma.

A spokesman for Mexico's Federal Preventative Police said he could not
immediately confirm the authenticity of the report cited by Reforma, and
supposedly drawn up by police and the national intelligence agency in March.

The rebels have been locked in an uneasy truce with the government since
1995, and say they won't discuss disarming until a law is passed
guaranteeing Indian rights and autonomy. Mexico passed such a law, but the
rebels said it was not forceful enough.

The rebels will not say how many combatants they currently have. At the
height of their military preparations in 1993, the Zapatistas claimed to
have had 4,500 active fighters and 2,000 militia reserves.

Since, then however, some former rebels have left the movement. The largest
concentration of armed, masked rebels seen in public at any one time since
then have been a few hundred.

The new camps are apparently simply spaces, often paved, within
Zapatista-controlled Indian towns that train 100 to 250 fighters apiece.

Since the cease-fire, the rebel movement has been largely confined to its
original areas of influence in Chiapas.

Isolated in self-governing enclaves, the rebels periodically protest against
the installation of roads, telephone lines or government development
projects, all of which they view as intrusions. However, they have not
battled army troops since 1995.