The women of Chiapas.

• Author: Flinchum, Robin
• Position: Women guard their communities in Chiapas, Mexico

Barefoot, with a baby in a sling on her back, Calendaria Morales Perez runs up a dusty road and brandishes a stick. Her orange skirt flounces around her knees,, and her collar flaps in the wind. "Murderers, assassins, sons of the devil," she cries in Spanish as she runs. "Out of our village!" Next to Morales Perez, an old woman, her aunt Aydelina Morales Guillen, lopes ahead on bent legs, echoing the cry, "Out, devils!"

Nine trucks, carrying close to 200 armed Mexican federal soldiers, prepare to leave Morelia, a small community in Chiapas, Mexico. Fifty women and children wave sticks and throw rocks at them.

Sixteen-year-old Clotilde Gomez Morales throws a rock that glances off the helmet of one of the soldiers in the last truck. He aims his rifle at her. Gomez Morales pushes forward. "Kill me then, if that's what you came for," she cries. "We don't want you here." The soldier lowers the rifle and looks away.

This is the second time in a week soldiers have tried to enter Morelia, and the second time in a week the women have turned them back.

It's early January, and the soldiers are acting on orders from Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo to "reestablish law and order" in the region after the massacre that took place in Acteal, Chiapas, on December 22. That day, a paramilitary group killed forty-five people, including four pregnant women and eighteen children. The Mexican government has arrested several police officers in connection with the massacre.

Citing the national Firearms and Explosives law, Zedillo has sent troops into several villages known to be supportive of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), a guerrilla movement defending the rights of indigenous people in Chiapas.

"The Mexican government has an obligation to put an end to this fratricidal war," stated newly appointed Minister of the Interior Francisco Labastida Ochoa. "No one has the moral authority to ask that justice and the law apply only to others. Therefore, the disarming of those who are using weapons illegally will continue."

But for many in Chiapas, the presence of federal troops means more conflict, not less.

In 1996, two years after the Zapatistas staged an armed uprising that drew international attention to the region, the Mexican government and the EZLN signed partial peace agreements--referred to as the San Andres Accords. The accords guaranteed the Zapatistas the right to free passage during negotiations and promised that the government would cease all...