If [former Mexican President Ernesto] Zedillo committed any act, gave any order, was aware of any act or order of any significance which led to the massacre, the plaintiffs claim, it would represent an act outside Zedillo's authority. But any one of those putative acts must be considered in context of the Chiapas Conflict in 1994.
The EZLN [Ejercito Zapista Liberacion Nacional ] attacked in January 1994, starting in the last year of the term of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Despite warnings by local and state government officials that the national government do something about the increased activity of Guatemalan rebel's use of Mexico as a haven against Guatemalan Army counterinsurgency operations since 1992, Salinas seem to be caught with his pants down. It was probably an unlikely combination of intervention by the Liberation Theology wing of the Mexican Catholic church and EZLN logistics that ended the hottest portion of the war.
It had to have been an embarrassing fiasco for Mexico's national government, and one for which the Mexican Army had developed a solution.
Only on Rantburg's Sunday Morning Coffee pot.