The PRI (the Institutional Revolutionary Party) was founded in 1929 as the Party of National Revolution and has been in power for over 70 years. The government consists of a president, with executive power, and the National Congress, including the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. The President and the Senate are elected every six years while the Chamber members are elected every three years. Each of the 31 states has its own constitution.

Although Mexican elections are supposedly free and fair, much of the vote comes from economic incentive and fraud. For example, in the 1988 elections the computer "broke down" in the middle of the count when it looked as if the opposing party's candidate, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PDR), was going to win.

Besides conducting unfair elections, the PRI is also accused of commiting many human rights violations. The Secretariat for Human Rights of the PDR reports that as of February 1, 1994, 263 of their members, activists and supporters had been assassinated since the beginning of the electoral campaign. (Katzenberger, 1998)

Other documented abuses (Katzenberger, 1998):

• Torture and due process abuses in the criminal justice system
• electoral fraud and election-related violence
• harassment, intimidation and violence against independent journalists, human rights monitors, environmentalists, workers, peasants, and indigenous peoples when they seek to exercise their rights to freedom of expression and assembly
• impunity for those who violate fundamental rights

In 1930, land reforms moved some of the land, as ejidos (collectives), back into the hands of the peasants, but private ownerships has always been a dominate force in Mexico. Recently, article 27 has changed the constitution to further the privatization of land. This, coupled with NAFTA, has forced the indigenous people to sell off their land because they are unable to compete with the imports from the United States.

Many of these issues, land reform and human rights violations, were the impetus for the uprising in 1994. On the surface, the government has made a show of wanting to promote peace and social justice for the indigenous people and the Zapatistas, however, their actions show otherwise.

After the conflict began with the Zapatista, the government helped train a right-wing group if civilians called Paz y Justicia, or Peace and Justice. Peace and Justice has been responsible for hundreds of deaths and has forced thousands of people out of their homes. When the refugees try to return to their villages they are assaulted. They have no one to defend or support them against this reign of terror.

All photographs copyright 1997 by Scott Sady