Monday, July 16, 2007

Mexico’s So-called “Popular Revolutionary Army”

By Barnard R. Thompson

The Earlier Years

The Popular Revolutionary Army (known by the initials EPR in Spanish), one of Mexico’s shadowy guerrilla movements that has been around for more than a decade, has been heard from anew.  This time with violent acts perpetrated against the state, namely the early July bombings of natural gas pipelines in the central states of Guanajuato and Querétaro, and then through what has become a somewhat usual communiqué message.

Yet this time the extremists’ message was heard far and wide, at home and abroad, both due to the bombings themselves, and with the resulting media coverage of not just the destruction but too the collateral sociopolitical, economic, industrial and image damage.  Plus other rebel activities, or self-proclaimed and publicity seeking leaders, did not dwarf the news (scant as it was at first) about the EPR cell or cells that claimed responsibility for these latest acts.

As well, the explosions turned out to be too big of a bang to cover-up or write-off as accidents.

During the 1960s a number of radical and student movements, including a score or more of armed groups, came out of their theretofore shells.  And the world got news of student and political unrest in Mexico when things came to a head on the eve of the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.  Events that led to the tragic October massacre at Tlatelolco and the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, when the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) government gave the order to open fire on mostly student demonstrators.

But the ironhandedness of the government, and its ruthless use of the military, did not quell the leftist and revolutionary movements, and in 1973 a dozen of the organizations joined together in the 23 of September Communist League.  An urban guerrilla movement set on fighting the state, the Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre went on to commit numerous violent acts against the PRI-government in the name of the popular classes.

They were no match for the government however, as Mexico’s “Dirty War” ensued.  A period from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, with large-scale deaths, detentions and disappearances of antigovernment protesters, individuals and groups.

Subsequent to 1982 there was a period of relative calm from armed groups and extremists, as the country tried to cope with the economic ruin and turmoil José López Portillo had left at the end of his 1976-1982 presidency.  But there was still a festering discontent.

The somewhat dormant radicals were still there, although a good number merged into mainstream politics as they aged.  This too because Mexico enacted a number of political reforms, and the country’s political parties — with the possible exception of the PRI — went through makeovers and mergers.

Many of the hardcore leftists and radicals who stayed out in the cold, along with 14 organized groups, joined with the PROCUP, the Clandestine Revolutionary Workers Party-Union of the People, a guerrilla organization that had actually been first formed in the 1960s.  But there was still no real unity, that was until the EPR, the Popular Revolutionary Army, surfaced in the early 1990s.

And the EPR, even with its cell structure, finally brought coordination to the armed insurgent groups movement in Mexico.  This even after internal frictions rose, and some sympathizers splintered into the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People (FARP), or joined the still active EPR affiliate Party of the Poor.

It should be mentioned that while the EPR apparently wanted to join forces, in covert operations at least, with the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), soi-disant Subcomandante Marcos apparently did not want to share the limelight with anyone.  Seemingly no formal bonds were formed as the EZLN leapt onto center stage with their 1994 uprising.

In the late 1990s, according to Mexican government intelligence reports, the EPR and its fellow travelers were actively involved in kidnapping, especially to get money to buy weapons and to finance guerrilla activities.  Some reports claim they received as much as US$50 million in ransom payments, which is a plausible amount when you consider that they went after high profile, influential and wealthy targets.

This observer remembers the 1994 kidnapping of banker Alfredo Harp Helú, and the reported payment of US$30 million for his release.  Money that supposedly went to the EPR, however a sizable amount of that money was later found in the hands of operators of a Mexican shipyard, a facility that was owned by another of Mexico’s wealthy and influential family conglomerates.

One in a series.

 

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Barnard Thompson, editor of MexiData.info, has spent nearly 50 years in Mexico and Latin America, providing multinational clients with actionable intelligence; country and political risk reporting and analysis; and business, lobbying, and problem resolution services.  He can be reached via e-mail at mexidata@ix.netcom.com.