Zapatistas emerge to reach out peacefully

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OVENTIC, Mexico -- The basketball announcer wore a ski mask. So did the guys playing the marimbas between games. The ice cream vendors and some of the players made do with bandanas that sometimes slipped below their mouths.

The relaxed atmosphere as Mexico's Zapatista rebels began a three-day public party yesterday was evidence of how far the movement has come since the tense, bloody days after it emerged in public by seizing several cities Jan. 1, 1994.

Masked Zapatista commanders gathered shortly before midnight Friday to inaugurate centers meant to smooth their dealings with outsiders. They call the locations "caracoles," or "snails," a Mayan symbol that represents, among other things, the "opening to the heart," according to a recent communication from the movement's spokesman, Subcomandante Marcos.

By yesterday morning, thousands thronged the site of the inaugural festivities, cluttering it with tents, tarps and hammocks. The assembly of rebels, villagers and foreign supporters was as thick in places as the New York City subway at rush hour.

At the gathering, the Zapatistas adopted "good-government committees" to help oversee a scattering of rebel-controlled townships in Chiapas state and to handle contacts from outsiders, who have often been frustrated in efforts to reach leaders of the clandestine organization.

The centers will handle conflicts with neighboring Indian communities. The Zapatistas have been unable to win over most local Indians -- who are often wary of the movement's style of collectivization, its military stance and its rejection of government aid.

"I think they are going to make it easier to resolve some conflicts with the neighbors, and that is good for us," said Juan Gonzalez, the Chiapas state official in charge of resolving intercommunal disputes.

They are also evidence of a continuing shift toward political rather than military struggle for the Zapatista movement, whose adherents use ski masks to hide their identity even though there have been no major military conflicts in more than nine years.

The poorly armed movement was beaten back into the jungle in 10 days before a cease-fire halted Mexico's army, but the Zapatista banner of Indian rights and opposition to free trade -- combined with Mr. Marcos' witty communiques -- won it international support.