POHLO -- The Survivors and Displaced

Traveling in a Volkswagen "Bug", I graveled 2 hours north from San Cristobal de las Casas, to the rural community of Pohlo (municipality of Chenalho). Having passed through two Army patrols already, we were obliged to stop at the 3rd military roadblock in the town of Chenalho. The soldiers --heavily armed and wearing bullet proof vests; machine-gun mounted jeeps parked nearby-- ordered us out. They checked under the hood of the car and in the back, ostensibly looking for guns.

They begin to write down our names, but we insisted that they not do so. It is a known strategy of the Mexican Army to computerize the names of foreigners in Chiapas that seem interested in human rights issues; authorities have kicked out hundreds of foreigners from the country, and\or not allowed them back in. "Where are you going," they ask. "To Pantelho" we reply, a village further up the road. They know that we know that they know that we are going to visit the refugees, but they have no right not to let us pass. These military blockades are far more imposing to the local population.

After being stopped at one more military roadblock (same procedure) and driving slowly through a 5th, the driver let us out at the entrance to Pohlo where the 8,000 displaced are camped; they arrived there on foot after the massacre, or fleeing priista paramilitary repression in their other communities. As we stood at the entrance to Pohlo, three army "Humvee's" (US-made, re-enforced jeeps, with mounted 50 millimeter machine guns) drove by from the direction of Acteal, a few kilometers up the road. A soldier stood ready at the machine-gun of the first Humvee.

We handed an introductory letter from Enlace Civil, a San Cristobal based citizen organization, to a man, who walked down into Pohlo to give it to the leaders of survivors and the displaced. The people of Pohlo do not allow anybody in without first reviewing who they are and what are their reasons for being there.

Due to years of repression and abandonment, they do not trust the State or Federal political authorities, and certainly not the military and security forces. Antonio Gutierrez Perez, a survivor of the Acteal massacre, and a member of the Las Abejas organization, explained that they "are not going to accept anything from the government, because all they do is give us some crumbs, so as to shut us up. What we are asking for is justice, and that they comply with the San Andres Accords [that were signed in 1996, before the peace negotiations broke down]." (La Jornada, February 4, 1998, p.11)

Soon, Roberto came up from the community. The leaders have read the letter, and agreed to take us around the community. We walk first along the road above the community. Roberto --from Pohlo-- points out an Army outpost\ roadblock about 1 kilometer further up the road. From its strategic position, the Army can see over the entire community of Pohlo, and can control passage up the road to Acteal.

We climb a steep foot-trail. Displaced refugees are building their rudimentary huts in small clusters around the community of Pohlo, each cluster comprised of families driven out of a particular village, in the municipality of Chenalho. Roberto stops to speak with a man in tzotzil; I smile at the man's young boy. Smiling back at me, barefoot, his stomach extends unnaturally with the telltale signs of malnutrition.

At the ridge top, women, elderly and children mill about their makeshift huts, cooking and doing chores; the men have hiked down to the center of Pohlo to fetch allotted shares of food supplies. Roberto explains who we are, speaking Tzotzil. We don't ask them what their needs are -- obviously they need everything.

The organic coffee harvests of the surviving community members of the Acteal massacre, and thousands who fled numerous other communities, were either destroyed or stolen. The timing of the massacre, some human rights groups argue, was planned to force "Zapatista supporters" to flee their communities just as the coffee harvest season was beginning. Beyond the loss of life and home, the economic losses suffered by thousands of people are total.

Potable water is the most pressing need of all. Women and men fetch water in small plastic buckets from as much as 2 kilometers away, if they can even find potable water. A short term priority project of Enlace Civil, and other religious groups and NGOs, is to truck water in. At the edge of the second encampment, on the ridge above Pohlo, we look across a valley to Acteal, 1 kilometer away. "The survivors of the massacre are very brave people," Roberto tells us. "They have returned to Acteal and are camped on the floor of the school," which he points out for us. "They are surrounded by priista townspeople, some of whom participated in the massacre."

We walk further along the ridge, until Roberto stops. Looking around the edge of a house, we see a military barrack, with a clear view of Pohlo, on one side, and Acteal on the other. This military outpost extends down the hill and to where a road block controls all traffic.

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1 Intro
2 Context
3 Pohlo
4 Needs