Mexico's Chiapas commissioner known as peacemaker

Alvarez speaks at a news conference in Mexico City on Tuesday

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (Reuters) -- Luis H. Alvarez, point man in Mexican President Vicente Fox's bid to end the six-year-old Chiapas rebellion, has played a pivotal role in the on-again-off-again peace effort and won respect from Zapatista rebels as a consensus builder.

Alvarez took a key step toward bringing the Zapatista leadership back to the negotiating table after a four-year impasse on Tuesday when he presented to Congress a rebel-backed Indian rights bill seen as a prerequisite to peace.

"Indigenous people have already waited many years, many decades, many centuries," Alvarez, the new administration's Chiapas peace commissioner, told a news conference.

The proposal would make into law the 1996 San Andres accords between rebels and the Congressional peace commission known as Cocopa. Alvarez helped hammer out the accords, named for the Chiapas village that hosted the talks, as a former senator and leading member of Cocopa.

"Alvarez had a very important role in the San Andres dialogue, his moral weight and leadership of Cocopa were very important," Noel Pineda of the Catholic diocese's Fray Bartolome Human Rights Center in Chiapas told Reuters.

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The Zapatistas took up arms over indigenous rights on New Years Day 1994 in a surprise uprising that left some 200 dead. While the initial shooting war only lasted 10 days, hundreds have since died in clashes between Zapatistas supporters and their rivals, some linked to Mexico's former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

The rebels walked away from peace negotiations in 1996 after the government failed to act on the San Andres accords, remaining at a bitter impasse since then with former President Ernesto Zedillo's government as the armed conflict simmered.

But Fox's election, which ended 71 years of rule by Zedillo's PRI, opened the door to renewing negotiations.

On Saturday, Fox's second day in office, Zapatista leader Subcommander Marcos made a rare public appearance to offer the rebels' conditional willingness to renew peace talks.

Marcos singled out Alvarez for "always addressing us with seriousness, respect and responsibility," welcoming his designation as peace commissioner.

At 85, Alvarez is the oldest member of Fox's extended Cabinet, a longtime member of Fox's conservative National Action Party (PAN), its former president and once a PAN presidential candidate. An architect with a gentlemanly demeanor, he is roundly respected both for his talent as a mediator and his commitment to principles.

That commitment nearly killed him in 1986, when he launched a hunger strike that lasted weeks to protest over apparently fraudulent PRI election tactics in his home state of Chihuahua.

"He was finally convinced by fellow party members that it was not worth sacrificing his life over the intransigence of a corrupt government," Mexican commentator Sergio Sarmiento recalled.

Still, Alvarez also showed flexibility in guiding the peace process as a member of Cocopa, putting aside personal differences with some points of the final accords in order to achieve consensus, observers said.

As PAN president, he was lambasted by party faithful for taking a conciliatory attitude toward then-PRI President Carlos Salinas, and some party militants resigned in protest.

Others saw that attitude as consistent with a practical approach to politics. He supported Salinas in policy decisions that had long been priorities for the conservative PAN, such as privatizing the banking system and normalizing relations with the Vatican, Sarmiento said.

"He is a reasonable man, not one who simply rejected everything as a member of the opposition," Sarmiento said.

But Alvarez did not lose sight of his party's interests. And he proved his political prescience when he predicted in 1995 that the PRI would be ousted from the presidency in the year 2000.

"The PRI is living its final moments," he said then.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Presidency of the Republic of Mexico
Partido Accion Nacional
Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI)
Chiapas: The land, the people, the struggle

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