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CHIAPAS, MEXICO - After the massive, peaceful mobilization that the Zapatista commanders undertook in late March to push for the recognition of indigenous rights and culture, hopes were very high that a negotiated settlement to the seven year uprising was close. So far, however, things have not worked out as many people had hoped.

At the end of April, the Congress passed a law on Indigenous Rights and Culture, but legislators made significant modifications to the San Andres Accords signed by the Zapatistas and the Mexican government in 1996.

The final version of the bill removed much of the heart and soul of the San Andrés Accords. It does not recognize indigenous communities as legal entities (as corporations are recognized), but as entities of public interest (like people under the age of 18). It also left out key measures to implement indigenous autonomy, such as the ability to create regional alliances within a given ethnic group and the collective use and benefit from the natural resources found on indigenous land.

Both the Zapatistas and the National Indigenous Congress immediately rejected the law as inconsistent with the San Andrés Accords and therefore not in compliance with the conditions for moving ahead with the peace process.

Father Gonzalo Ituarte, Peace and Justice Vicar of the Diocese of San Cristobal, sees the modified law as ³Another way by which the mestizos have humiliated the indigenous" by not respecting their voice or the voices of hundreds of thousands of other Mexicans who spoke in the recent mobilization. The changes to this law are seen by many Mexicans as an affront to democracy.