By Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 24 1997; Page A08

Paramilitary gunmen opened fire on residents of a politically divided village in the southern state of Chiapas on Monday, killing an estimated 45 people. Many of the victims were slaughtered inside a church, where they had sought refuge after hearing the first shots, according to human rights activists who interviewed witnesses today.

Red Cross officials said most of those gunned down were women and children who died of multiple gunshot wounds; others were hacked to death with machetes, according to a Red Cross official. In a broadcast to the nation, President Ernesto Zedillo condemned the attack as "a cruel, absurd criminal act."

The massacre constituted the greatest loss of life in a single incident in Chiapas since 135 people were killed in a brief uprising by the Indian-based Zapatista National Liberation Front in January 1994. The new killings dramatized the regional conflict and rural violence that continue to plague Mexico even as its national government proceeds with democratic reforms and economic liberalization programs that it hopes will modernize the country.

The massacre occurred in Acteal, a village of 600 people 12 miles north of the regional center of San Cristobal de las Casas; it followed months of political tension in the village and surrounding communities as local chapters of Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) have lost political support to rebel sympathizers and other opposition groups. Regional human rights workers said they believe the gunmen who killed the villagers are supported and financed by leaders of these local PRI chapters.

"We were praying for our lives when they came in shooting," a sobbing Ernesto Mendez told the Mexican television news program "24 Hours," adding that he was the only member of his family to survive the spray of bullets inside the church.

The 45 victims, mostly Indians, were 21 women, 14 children, one infant and nine men, according to Red Cross and human rights officials in San Cristobal. An additional 19 people -- including babies and young children -- were hospitalized with a variety of wounds, human rights officials said. Many of them suffered machete slashes to their faces and arms, according to Mexican television footage from the scene.

The gunfire began at 8:30 a.m. Monday and continued until nightfall, witnesses told human rights officials. Red Cross workers said local security forces prevented them from entering the village until nearly midnight. Throughout the day, human rights workers said, they contacted Chiapas state officials about reports of gunfire in Acteal and in nearby encampments where political refugees from the divided village had been living in tents. They said authorities ignored their reports.

"At 11:45 a.m., the [gunmen] came into the church and started shooting," Marina Patricia Jimenez, a regional human rights monitor said in a telephone interview from San Cristobal. "There were about 70 people in the church. Many ran away. Many were killed inside the church."

Some victims were gunned down as they fled the refugee camps, carrying infants in shawls and clutching older children as they scrambled through the underbrush along a nearby steep river bank, witnesses said. The attackers, firing AK-47 assault rifles and wielding machetes, pursued many of the victims down the bank, leaving the packed earth stained with blood, witnesses said.

In the nearly four years since the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, several hundred people have been killed there in complex feuds involving politics, religion, Indian land rights and social and economic upheaval throughout the state -- a swath of jungle-covered hills bordering Guatemala. In recent months, particularly, thousands of villagers have fled into makeshift camps outside their traditional communities to escape persecution by pro-government local officials and the militia units they support, according to human rights workers.

In addition to the thousands of Mexican troops and state security forces deployed throughout Chiapas, local communities, land owners and political parties maintain their own forces, which often operate outside the law, taking justice into their own hands to punish political and economic foes.

"What we're seeing is a battle for control of allegiances of the communities," said Joel Solomon, of the organization Human Rights Watch/Americas, which has been monitoring allegations of political abuse in Chiapas. "We found a pattern of the government turning a blind eye to abuses commited by pro-government people."

"This is genocide, and the government acted with negligence" for refusing to react to warnings of the potential for violence in the Acteal area, said Jimenez. She asserted that the gunmen were aligned with the ruling PRI in three towns where its support has been seriously eroded in recent months, leading party officials and their security forces to try to intimidate villagers associated with opposition parties or movements.

Zedillo said in his broadcast that he had ordered the federal attorney general's office to begin an investigation of the incident, and he instructed the national human rights commission to assist victims' families.