On December 22, 45 peasants were massacred in the rural Mexican village of Acteal, Chiapas. Nine men, 21 women, and 15 children were gunned down over a period of up to five hours, while giving pre-Christmas prayers in church. The attackers, working in an organized group, used AK-47s with hollow-tipped bullets and hacked the bodies with machetes. Local police, only 200 meters away, not only failed to intervene, but reportedly turned away others who had heard of the violence and attempted to respond.

U.S. mass media coverage of the atrocity was unusual both for its prominence and its open skepticism toward the official state and federal Mexican versions of events. While the Chiapas state government attributed the bloodshed to a feud between local families, and Mexico City promised an investigation (while instead using the Christmas holidays to send more U.S.-funded guns and troops to the region), the leadership of the rebel Zapatistas was most often quoted authoritatively to describe what had happened.

The EZLN, as well as numerous campesino and foreign observer groups, have been warning for nearly two years of escalating violence by paramilitary groups in southern Mexico. These groups, generally loyal to large landowners and tied to the ruling party, PRI (which has controlled Mexico's government for most of the 20th century), are waging a systematic low-level campaign of terror to discourage both Zapatista sympathizers and ejido and plantation workers demanding land reform and economic justice. The violence has been getting worse; in the past three months, at least 600 have died at the hands of the paramilitaries.

That such information made it even briefly onto U.S. front pages is a major breakthrough. But, not surprisingly, it leaves out large parts of the story--specifically, the parts involving the U.S., and the implications for U.S. readers and viewers.

With free trade, what affects Mexico has a huge impact on the U.S. Free trade has allowed the U.S. to control the economy of Mexico (and Canada) without accepting liability for the fate of its people--but its people can, in turn, have quite an impact on Mexico's (and our) economy. It's about time that corporate media start worrying about the economic and human rights catastrophe that is the rotating Mexican dictatorship, now under Ernesto Zedillo. But to examine why Mexico's economy is (except for the few at the top) in ruins, and why it could detonate politically at any moment, the real reporting starts in Washington and New York.

By 1984, when mid-term state elections were held in several northern states where the conservative PAN was strong, analysts were claiming that the PRI's days as Mexico's dominant party were numbered. How has the PRI, in the face of mass civil opposition, remained in power without serious challenge for an additional 14 years? The answer lies largely in the huge sums of money funneled to it by the U.S., first through the "War on Drugs" and more recently through maquiladoras, bond investments, Bill Clinton's 1995 bailout, and other miracles of "free" trade. With 14 extra years of pliant dictatorship (a.k.a. "democracy"), the U.S. has purchased a model for the coming global economy: cheap labor, lax (and unenforced) pollution and worker safety laws, no social service burden on the economy, corrupt cops, official state unions, and military hardware and advisers to help with the inevitable trouble.

The lessons of Acteal are not simply that the thugs working for the government of Chiapas, or of Mexico, are corrupt and brutal. It is that their victims are victims for the same reasons that so many in the U.S. are under attack by corporate downsizing, stagnant wages, slashed social spending, militarized police, and urban violence; the differences are merely of scale. The same people, using the same logic, are making every effort under free trade to minimize costs and maximize profit in Chiapas, in Washington state, and in the eight U.S. and Mexican states that lie between.

The difference between training federal and local police in "urban counter-terrorist" procedures to combat politically motivated "criminals," and arming shadowy paramilitary groups to keep the rabble respectful, really isn't all that great. Neither is the difference between 88 years of one-party rule and nearly 200 years of rule by two parties now largely funded by the same corporations. Mexico's people need your active help and support in fighting the global monster, for one simple reason: you're next.

--Geov Parrish

In Seattle, vigils will continue on the 22nd of each month (5:00 PM, Mexican consulate, 3rd & Blanchard in Belltown) until the Mexican government owns up to who ordered, planned, and carried out the Acteal massacre. For more information or to get involved, contact the Comite Contra La Represion y Por La Democracia en Mexico, Box 12252, Seattle WA 98102, e-mail lazarus9@hotmail.com. Nationally, call the Campaign for Freedom and Democracy in Mexico, 1-800-405-7770, or on the web, http://www.ezln.org.

Families of the Acteal victims can be supported by sending a donation: in the name of Enlace Civil A.C., Banco Bancomer, Account #1000 754-2, Branch #437.