Weekly Report - 20 January 2004

The Fox administration has made it dramatically clear that its toleration of the `autonomous municipalities' established by the Zapatistas in the state of Chiapas does not extend to similar actions elsewhere. On 14 January an 800-strong array of security forces descended upon the small town of Tlalnepantla, in the southeastern state of Morelos, to quash its transformation into an `autonomous municipality'. Now the federal interior ministry says it is investigating whether Zapatista-style `guerrilla groups' were involved in this `breach of the constitutional order'.