On the road to Puerto Cabezas, the cowboy country of Nicaragua’s central mountains slopes into the lush lowlands of the Miskito Rainforest - what’s left of it. For centuries, this region was an impenetrable jungle which protected the Miskito and Mayangna Indians from conquest. Just a few years ago, there was no road to the Caribbean coastal town. Now, Central America’s largest rainforest is shrinking faster than ever, and the Indians find themselves the guardians of what once was their protector.

In the 1980s, the Indians of the rainforest and Caribbean coastal plains - a region collectively known as Miskitia - took up arms against the central government of Managua to secure constitutional guarantees of their autonomy. Today, they find control of their lands threatened again, as the constitution is eroded by bureaucracy, corruption, and austerity. As a result, they view the new road with suspicion: an artery to bring more settlers in and take natural resources out.

The Miskito inhabit the coastal plains and villages along the Rio Coco, the border with Honduras. The Mayangna, known to outsiders as the Sumo, are the people of the inland rainforest. Other Miskitia inhabitants are the Creoles, descendants of rebellious slaves sent by the British to populate the region, small Rama and Garifuna Indian communities, and 200,000 mestizos, recent settlers from central and Pacific Nicaragua.

Since Miskitia was granted autonomy in 1987, it’s been divided into the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN), with its seat at Puerto Cabezas, and the South Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAS). The Indians are mostly in the RAAN. During the last struggle, the leftist Sandinista government attempted to "nationalize" Indian lands; now President Arnoldo Aleman of the Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC) wants to "privatize" them. But as the recent case of a South Korean logging firm demonstrates, Indians are again prepared to resist.

With some stability returning after years of warfare, foreign timber and mineral companies are recolonizing the rainforest. Under the long Somoza dictatorship, local fiefdoms were granted to US firms; today, the transnationals welcomed to Miskitia by President Arnoldo Aleman are just as likely to be Asian. Intensely politicized by the autonomy struggle, the Indians are defending their territorial rights.

"All This Land"

In March 1996, President Violeta Chamorro granted a 62,000-hectare logging concession to Sol del Caribe, SA (SOLCARSA), in Miskitia. The deal was approved by the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry (MARENA) and the State Forest Administration (ADFOREST). The 30-year concession at Cerro Wakambay was the longest and biggest in Nicaragua. But the Mayangna village of Awas Tingni, which wasn’t consulted, considers Cerro Wakambay to be the heart of their traditional lands.

Awas Tingni leaders had recently mapped their traditional lands using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology, assisted by satellite positioning. The project was organized by the Indian Law Resource Center (ILRC) based in Washington, DC, and a group of anthropologists and technicians from the University of Iowa. Elders and hunters guided the scholars through their sacred sites and hunting grounds to produce a map of 90,000 hectares claimed as the community’s traditional lands.

The project arose from Awas Tingni’s earlier conflicts with another timber company, Maderas y Derivados de Nicaragua (MADENSA), which paid the community to operate on 43,000 hectares. MADENSA officials include Sandinista party members, and it professes an environmentally sensitive forestry. These claims attracted the attention of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Interested in assisting sustainable forestry in Nicaragua, the WWF approached the University of Iowa, which joined with ILRC to send a team to Awas Tingni in 1993.

What they found were disputes with MADENSA over payments and the community’s rights within the concession area. Appointed the community’s official representatives, the team entered into negotiations with MADENSA and arranged a deal in which Awas Tingni participates in managing the concession.

In June 1995, however, while it was still pending before the central government, the SOLCARSA concession was approved by the RAAN Council’s seven-member Junta Directiva - but not by the entire 45-member council, as required by the constitution. Awas Tingni realized that the concession was in the heart of the demarcated area. Says James Anaya, an attorney with the ILRC: "We pointed this out to the government, but they refused to back down. They were adamant that there was no way that the community could have Ôall this land’ as they put it."

In September, ILRC attorneys filed a case for Awas Tingni on the basis of land rights. But the Matagalpa Appeals Tribunal ruled that the case had been filed too late - over 30 days after the community had sent a letter to MARENA protesting the concession. "We were tripped up by a narrow technicality," says Anaya.

Aleman’s Big Idea

In October, Anaya and the ILRC filed a case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS). In March 1996, with the OAS case pending, Managua approved the SOLCARSA concession. With ILRC legal support, two RAAN Council members filed a new case, challenging the concession’s approval by the Junta Directiva. Almost a year later, the Matagalpa Appeals Tribunal granted an injunction. MARENA appealed, and the case was on its way to Nicaragua’s highest court.

On February 27, 1997, Nicaragua’s Supreme Court of Justice issued a decision on both the original Awas Tingni’s land rights case and the second challenging the Junta Directiva vote. Although the court upheld the lower court decision on the Awas Tingni case, it found the Junta Directiva vote unconstitutional. Aleman should suspend the contract, it ruled.

But the president had other ideas. On May 29, 1997, a letter from MARENA chief Roberto Stadthagen Vogl to the RAAN Council requested approval of the concession, invoking "the need to assure the development of our nation and especially the Atlantic Coast." In October, the council approved the SOLCARSA concession. It was the first time the council had met in months, due to lack of a budget from the central government.

"Aleman cut off funds for the council immediately after his election," says RAAN Councilor Alta Hooker, who supported the concession in the Junta Directiva vote but abstained in the October general council vote. She felt the vote was compromised by SOLCARSA’s aggressive tactics.

The central government provided special financing for the RAAN Council to meet on the concession vote. "That was the last time the council met," says Hooker. "Who put up the money? A lot of people say it was SOLCARSA." James Anaya openly asserts that the company funded the vote: "SOLCARSA put up the money for them to meet. We had an investigative report and determined this beyond a doubt."

Maria Luisa Acosta, Anaya’s Nicaraguan co-counsel, made the next move: asking the Supreme Court of Justice to order that the government comply with the earlier decision declaring the concession invalid. On February 3, 1998, almost a year after the previous ruling, this was granted. The Supreme Court found that the RAAN Council vote was an improper after-the-fact remedy, and ordered Aleman and MARENA to comply with the year-old decision. The SOLCARSA concession was finally canceled.

"But we continue to push the larger issue of indigenous land tenure before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights," says Anaya. The OAS case argues that the SOLCARSA concession violated several guarantees of the American Convention on Human Rights: the rights to secure property, equality before the law, petition and prompt response, cultural integrity, and even religion. The community has traditionally used two-thirds of the land in SOLCARSA’s concession area, and over half of MADENSA’s.

Esidiaco Castillo is the coordinator of Awas Tingni, a position in Miskitia’s community self-government tradition. He says Managua has no right to make decisions on this land without the community’s input. "Here there is no government land. There is no national land. This is all communal land. We are not against the government, but they have to respect this. It doesn’t matter if it’s Sandinista or Liberal. We are prepared to die for this."

Rip Off in Rosita

SOLCARSA first built a plant at Betania, outside Puerto Cabezas, but abandoned it in 1997 to build a new plant at Rosita, in the rainforest. There had been conflicts with Betania’s Miskito elders, or ancianos, over compensation for building it. The company was engaged in talks with the ancianos when it pulled out.

The Betania plant was built to export mahogany from Puerto Cabezas. Conflicts with the municipal government may have helped prompt the move. The new Rosita plant started turning less valuable rainforest trees into plywood, to be trucked out to Managua. It was already processing trees felled by contract teams elsewhere in the forest before the road to the concession area was even complete.

The plywood was sold domestically, with plans to expand to other Central American markets. But the low-quality plywood was likely seen as a holdover until the precious mahogany and cedar of the Cerro Wakambay concession area could be exploited.

Shortly before MARENA officially requested RAAN Council approval of the concession, the agency fined SOLCARSA one million cordobas for building its Rosita plant without approval. Meanwhile, the local Mayangna community of Fenicia was relocated to accommodate the plant. Fenicia households were offered 1500 cordobas (about $150) each to move, plus a school, potable water system, electricity, and jobs. Residents say they have received only the money.

In September 1996, National Police and army troops enforced the move from Old Fenicia, residents say. According to Avel Dixon, "They said we would have potable water, electricity, work, a church, pero ahora - nada." Of Fenicia’s population of 115, only one worked at SOLCARSA. Another was fired. Felix Alvaro, Fenicia’s anciano, who was born at Old Fenicia in 1932, says: "We are the true owners, but we cannot cross that line. We are menaced by men with guns. They say we have no right to go there."

The 200 employees at the plant, mostly mestizos, were much less than the 2500 initially promised to Rosita municipal authorities. Some were paid as little as 25 cordobas (around $2.50) a day. "The managers told us there are no unions in South Korea," one worker told me. But the workers were also quick to point out that there is no other work in Rosita, and that campesinos also destroy the forest.

SOLCARSA was also accused of breaking a 1995 logging agreement with the Miskito community of Kukalaya. Rigoberto Gonzalez Garbeth, a Miskito legal advisor to Kukalaya, says SOLCARSA’s contractors destroyed over 9000 trees on Kukalaya lands in violation of that deal. "The community has known absolutely no benefit from Sol del Caribe," says Gonzalez. "The natural resources signify the survival of our communities - our Yapti Tasba, Madre Tierra [Mother Earth]."

The Company Line

Representatives from Miskito and Mayangna communities throughout the region attended a Forum on Forest Concessions held in Rosita on February 20-21, 1998. The Forum issued a "Declaration of Rosita," calling on the RAAN Council to suspend SOLCARSA’s concession pending demarcation of indigenous lands, and demanding that the central government cease granting concessions on communal lands.

However, SOLCARSA continued to insist it was complying completely with Nica-raguan law. "We are interested in doing a longtime business here," SOLCARSA plant manager Avram Lee told the New York Times. "How can we do that by cheating people?" He dismissed the protests of Indian leaders: "I told them, we don’t have anything to do with your people. We made a deal with the government." On the other hand, a SOLCARSA fact sheet on the dispute claims the company "is respecting the rights and autonomy of the indigenous communities."

SOLCARSA is a subsidiary of the Korean multinational Kum Kyung, primarily a clothing manufacturer. It boasts $5 million annual profits in sales to such fashion icons as Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent. Kum Kyung’s NICSEDA subsidiary has two plants in Managua’s free trade zone, where 800 employees sew clothes for export to the US at two cordobas (20 cents) per hour.

As the Asian financial crisis started to hit, Kum Kyung saw expanding into timber as a bold new strategy. But by the time the Supreme Court issued its February decision, its plunge into the rainforest was starting to look like a reckless gamble. On April 2, after eight more weeks of slicing up trees, SOLCARSA officially announced that it was quitting Nicaragua. In Rosita, workers suddenly thrown out of work gathered angrily at the mill, and National Police were called out to secure the site. v

- To be continued.

Bill Weinberg travelled with the Native Forest Network (NFN) early in 1998 to visit Nicaragua’s North Atlantic Autonomous Region. In part two of this series, he will examine the new autonomy struggle, threatened biodiversity, and global governance.

Our lives are haunted by secrets -- things kept from us by society, friends, even our own families. Just when we think the whole story is on the table, another revelation can force us to reconsider how we look at the world, our leaders, and ourselves.

This truism was brought home for me recently during a visit to Kentucky, where I spent several days with one of that state's most beloved civil rights leaders, Georgia Davis Powers. Invited to discuss a book she's writing about one of her ancestors, I learned some surprising things not only about the suppressed history of one Black family, but also about the secret life of Martin Luther King.

Thirty years ago, on April 4, King was assassinated on the balcony of a Memphis motel as he prepared to support striking Black sanitation workers there. Although James Earl Ray initially confessed to the crime (later recanting), doubts about the full circumstances persist. Last week, for example, former FBI agent Donald Wilson, who investigated the murder, presented evidence he claims to have found in Ray's car -- slips of paper that may support charges of a conspiracy involving federal agents. Wilson didn't produce the evidence earlier, he says, because he didn't trust other investigators and feared for his family's safety. The King family still questions the official version and was eager to see Ray get a new trial before he died of liver cancer.

But it's easier, in a way, to accept that King was the victim of a conspiracy than to face other facts about his life. As Georgia Powers put it, "He was a great man -- but he was still a man." Like Bill Clinton, whose accomplishments as president have been largely overshadowed by relentless investigation of alleged personal misbehavior, King was hounded by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who hoped to discredit the civil rights leader by exposing alleged "womanizing." Today, many civil rights leaders dismiss such charges as mean-spirited attempts to sully King's memory and discredit his historic achievements.

Georgia Powers certainly has no intention of doing that. On the contrary. She worked closely with King in the 60s, organizing to end discrimination in public accommodations and employment and pass open housing laws. In 1967, she became the first Black and first woman elected to the Kentucky State Senate, a position she held with distinction for the next 20 years. During her first term, less than a month before King's death, she spearheaded passage of a statewide open housing bill.

But her relationship with King was more than professional. As she revealed in her 1995 book, I Shared the Dream, their work together led to a love affair that continued until the last moments of his life. Keeping that secret for almost three decades, she went public only after other civil rights leaders released inaccurate accounts of their relationship and the events surrounding King's death. She was particularly upset by comments in an autobiography written by Ralph Abernathy, King's closest friend and confidante. Though willing to attribute Abernathy's misstatements to illness and a poor memory, she felt compelled to set the record straight. "When Dr. King's life is researched," she writes, "I want the part relating to me to be available in my own words. It is my own history as well, both the good and the bad."

It began with mutual admiration, she explains, and "progressed into a deepening friendship in which we shared opinions, confidences, and laughed often." She called him "M.L.," and he called her "Senator." But King was under tremendous pressure, and ultimately turned to Georgia for intimacy and emotional support. Although they sometimes discussed issues and strategies, his main unmet need was time to let his hair down and set his cares aside.

"Some people called him a prophet, and compared him with Jesus," she recalls. While she does believe that he was divinely inspired, "I knew Martin had all the imperfections, foibles, and passions of a mortal man." A meticulous person with an affection for silk suits, he enjoyed laughter and jokes, barbecued ribs and soul foods, not to mention the company of attractive women. In short, she says, "He had a good appetite for life."

He also had a strong sense that he wouldn't get to see his visions come to pass. Tired and melancholy one night, he told her, "I'm just as normal as any other man. I want to live a long life, but I know I won't get to."

Georgia was in Memphis with King on the day he died. The previous night he'd confided, "I've never been more physically and emotionally tired." On April 4 they waited most of the day to see if a temporary restraining order against the planned demonstration would be lifted. But King was adamant. Regardless of what the court decided, he promised, "We will march on Monday." When Abernathy asked whether he feared what might happen, King answered slowly, "I'd rather be dead than afraid."

As the meeting broke up and the group prepared for a soul food dinner, King brushed past Georgia on his way out the door. "I'm looking forward to a quiet and peaceful evening," he said softly. "Don't make any plans." They were the last words he ever spoke to her. Moments later he was shot.

Looking back, she still regrets that her actions may have hurt others, especially King's wife, Coretta. But despite those feelings, she's never regretted her decision, realizing that it wasn't merely some tawdry affair. "When we were together," she recalls, "the rest of the world, whose problems we knew and shared, was far away. Our time together was a safe haven for both of us. There we could laugh and speak of things others might not understand. He trusted me, and I him, not to talk about it."

As the years passed, however, Georgia became increasingly uncomfortable with the rumors that distorted their relationship. She also realized that her life, like so many, is full of such hidden truths. One was her ancestry; although she still doesn't know the identity of her father's father, she eventually learned that he was White. Another involved her great aunt, Celia Mudd, who was born into slavery in 1859 but eventually inherited the rural Kentucky farm on which she'd spent all her life. As a child, Georgia often asked how it happened. But for her parents and other family members, this was apparently a secret better left untouched.

During the last few years, however, she's managed to uncover most of the true story. The key was a will dated March 15, 1902, in which Sam Lancaster, whose father had bought the Nelson County farm over 60 years earlier, left it to his most trusted employee -- the former slave whom Georgia knew as Aunt Celia. That fateful decision led to a court battle with Sam's surviving brother, and the predictable rumors that Celia and Sam had been lovers. But a medical examination proved conclusively that this was impossible. At the age of 42, Celia Mudd was still a virgin.

Although the case went to Kentucky's highest court, most newspapers declined to report about it. A Black woman inheriting more than 500 acres of land from a White man apparently wasn't considered news. Neither was the fact that Celia Mudd went on to become a local philanthropist, admired by Blacks and Whites alike.

In March, I visited the farm on which Aunt Celia spent her life. Stepping into the old slave quarters where she was born, I reflected on how much we still don't understand about that time, when Whites, however kindly they treated Blacks, believed that they were no more than property. And I also thought about how we too often choose to ignore or downplay the racial inequities that continue to this day. Within two years, for example, Blacks will account for half of all AIDS cases in the US, although they're only 12 percent of the population. The number of young Black men in prison is heavily disproportionate to Whites, public spending still produces a two-class public school system, and racially-motivated violence plagues even the most superficially tranquil communities.

Rather than petty arguments about the need to apologize for past wrong-doing, whether it's slavery or a personal weakness, what we need instead is the strength to face our own and society's uncomfortable secrets -- to openly acknowledge them, and also to forgive. After all, leaders, and even prophets, are human beings. So, let's give them, as well as ourselves, a break.

Greg Guma is the editor of Toward Freedom.

It's hot already, as the early morning sun beats down on the crooked tin roof of the new church in Acteal. Just behind the makeshift bench where I'm sitting in the open air is a mass grave. It holds the bodies of 45 victims of a massacre that claimed the lives of mostly women and children here last December.

On either side of me are two young women, survivors of that massacre who lost most of their families. In front sits Maria Santiz Lopez, a leader of the Abeja, a religious group committed to nonviolence. Maria is talking about her traditional dress, and her fears that when it's worn out, there won't be another to take its place - that she'll lose her identity in hand-me-down, non-traditional dresses from well-wishers who don't understand what her clothes mean to her.

Unavoidably, we eventually talk about what happened here. One of the young women beside me saw seven members of her family butchered by armed paramilitaries. Maria lost her father-in-law and her sister-in-law. We don't discuss the details. It's too painful, and, by now, we all know the story too well.

But according to Maria, many of the assassins identified by survivors of the massacre are still at large. In fact, she says they frequently drive by the community, and all the women can do is watch and pray. Threatening to return, the paramilitaries have fired shots in the air from the road. Maria begins to cry. First the tears slip out, then her voice loses volume until it's only a whisper that fades into a deep sob. She covers her face, flipping up the shawl which until now concealed her nursing baby, born just after the massacre.

She goes on talking, about missing her father-in-law, and how it's easier to work or be with the other women than remain home, left alone with her thoughts. She talks about the sorrow that haunts them all. The other women are crying now, and soon, I'm crying, too.

When the interview is over, I shake hands with the women. They smile and return to the communal kitchen where they take solace in each other's company, and even laugh and gossip when they can forget the sorrow that rests just over the hill.

I wonder if I've done the right thing, coming to hear their stories, reopening wounds that need to heal. But they say they want to talk about it. Even more, they want the world to hear their voices. Sometimes it seems like such outside attention, and the international human rights observers who maintain a presence in peace camps here are all that stand between the women and another bloody raid.

In early 1994, the Zapatistas began inviting outside human rights observers to maintain a presence in communities at risk of aggression by the federal military. Today, Civilian Camps for Peace exist in most troubled communities in Chiapas. The peace campers stay for a week or two, get to know people, and bear witness to any confrontations that take place. Most arrive on tourist visas and are given credentials in San Cristobal de las Casas by the Fray Bartolomey Human Rights Center and Enlace Civil, a civilian support wing of the Zapatistas. From there they go to a community that needs observers. The peace camp in Acteal is new, and has only existed since shortly after the massacre.

Dangerous Questions

I drive away from Acteal in my spiffy rental car, feeling heavy. I'm lost in thoughts of those women, and what this dirty, low intensity war has done to people all over Chiapas. Not far from there I come upon a pickup truck by the side of the road. As a uniformed man waves me down, I realize that the gamble I took in coming here may have been lost.

All foreigners who work in the conflict zone run the same risk. If we don't have work or journalist visas, we're not allowed in these areas. Getting a work visa is next to impossible, and I don't have one.

In recent months, the Mexican government has mounted an anti-foreigner campaign of unprecedented proportions, launching a media blitz designed to convince the Mexican public that outsiders are behind the conflict in Chiapas, that they're exacerbating a political situation which has nothing to do with them. Citizens have been asked to inform on their foreign neighbors; tourists have been stopped downtown and asked for papers. Some foreigners have reportedly been followed, and phone conversations take on a ridiculous tone as visitors attempt to disguise what they're doing.

The immigration officer asks where I'm from and wants my papers. I pretend not to understand. Then he speaks in English. Another man appears and takes my passport. They pore over it for a few minutes, then ask me to step out of the car.

They ask questions about what I'm doing here. Going to see the church in Pantehlo, I reply. But they say they've just come from Pantehlo and didn't see me there - though they did see my car in Acteal. What was I doing there? Well, I hesitate, trying to look embarrassed, I had to, you see, uh ... well, actually, I had to pee.

They don't seem to believe me. They ask me more questions and I continue to pretend I don't understand. They also make derogatory remarks about me in Spanish. I work hard at not responding. For about 15 minutes, which seems an eternity, they labor over some forms, repeatedly asking what I was doing in Acteal.

I want to stand in the road and shout, "Look, damn it! Look at what's in front of you. Look at the beauty of this place, look at the sorrow and the pain. Look at those sons of bitches driving up and down this road - they murder innocent women and children and go free. Question them, don't look at me. All I did was listen to some women's stories, and I will not apologize."

But I don't say this. Instead, I smile and say thank you when they tell me to appear at the immigration office in San Cristobal within 48 hours. They keep my visa, but say not to worry, it's no problem. No problem for them. They haven't spent the last two months watching people get deported left and right, wondering why the government is so eager to be rid of potential witnesses. They haven't spent days shut up in their homes because the migra was patrolling the zocalo, or worried about friends out in communities, wondering which one will get picked off next. There were eight expulsions in early March, and more before that, including Tom Hansen and Padre Michel, the French priest who worked in and around Acteal for 32 years.

A Close Call

A mestiza woman, born and raised in San Cristobal, accompanies me to my interrogation. She makes the offer because it isn't safe for any of my gringo friends, and also because she believes that what her government is doing is wrong.

The immigration officer is polite, and seems somewhat convinced by my story: I'm a tourist traveling in Mexico, who just wanted to go for a drive, saw the military and got scared. I decided to go home, but had to pee.

Am I familiar with Mexican immigration law? No. Did I bring any kind of humanitarian aid? Have I taught classes? Have I visited any villages in the conflict zone? No. Have I talked with any people involved in this struggle. No, I say again.

Not that bringing aid to the poor is against Mexican law. But often the insurgents who commit crimes against the government are those very same poor. So, if you help them, you're aiding and abetting crimes against the state. As a foreigner, it's also against the law to provide humanitarian aid unless you have government permission. However, in the case of Tom Hansen, even credentials provided by the government agency Cocopa, and a legal stay of deportation, weren't enough to stop the immigration authorities from holding him incommunicado for 24 hours before deporting him to Miami.

The officer doesn't waste much energy questioning me. He explains that Acteal is a sensitive area and that foreigners have been interfering where they don't belong. The Mexican government is just trying to protect its people. I nod as if I understand this perfectly, though I don't and never will. He gives me a temporary visa which states in no uncertain terms that I'm to leave the country in 18 days, from the Mexico City International Airport. There are no restrictions on my return.

It's better than I could have hoped for. Most others brought in for questioning are given less than five days to leave, or taken directly to the airport, put on the next plane to the US, and told they can never return.

Recently, three women, two Europeans and one US citizen, were stopped on their way to a peace camp. They showed their credentials as human rights observers from Fray Bartolomey. Peace campers don't work while they are in communities, except as ad hoc volunteers. They aren't paid. Yet, it's difficult to fit acting as a human rights observer into the classification of tourism. The women were given notice to appear in San Cristobal, which they did. From the immigration office, however, they were taken to Tuxtla Gutierrez and put on a plane to Mexico City, where they were abandoned when the US embassy intervened on behalf of the US woman.

So, I'm lucky. But that doesn't mean I'm not angry. It's hard to be a foreigner here now, hard to justify - in legal terms - what I'm doing. But it would be harder to turn my back. Armed men who kill innocent women and children roam free to kill again. Even though the situation of women here is intolerable, they fight back anyway, counting on outsiders to bear witness. But precisely because we want to be witnesses, the government and their accomplices would like to be rid of us.

Well, I'm going. But I'll be back.

Robin Kelsey is a freelance writer working in Chiapas, Mexico

Esperanza Aguilar Jimenez is a skinny seven-year-old, all legs and arms in a well-worn, carefully patched, poofy-skirt dress. She sits next to me on a dusty rock at the side of the road leading into Morelia, her village in the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas. It's mid-morning, and Esperanza ought to be in school. But all her teachers are gone. Fearing the imminent advance of the Mexican military, they packed themselves tightly into a little pickup and drove as quickly as they could down the deeply rutted road out of town. I know this because I watched them go.

Along with about 20 other women and children from this community, plus a handful of outside human rights observers, Esperanza and I have been keeping a vigil here since soldiers were first spotted in the area yesterday afternoon. The warning was given during a mass in honor of three men taken from Morelia and allegedly killed by the military in 1994. The women quickly doused their memorial candles, shed their lace mantillas, and ran, picking up sticks as they went. Smaller children were shuttled into houses with older women; shutters were pulled tight, doors closed and bolted.

Except for the lay minister who'd been giving the mass in tzeltal, no men were in sight when we ran for the road. They'd been hiding in the mountains since early this year, when President Ernesto Zedillo began sending federal troops into the rural indigenous communities known to support the EZLN, a guerrilla army fighting for the autonomy of the indigenous people of Chiapas- and all Mexicans.

Zedillo claims that he wants to protect people from the sort of violence that led to the massacre of 45 civilians at the hands of a paramilitary group in Acteal, Chiapas, last December. Thus, it's imperative to disarm all militant factions, he says. But to those who live here, the government sending in troops is the same one that armed the killers in Acteal. Their coming means nothing but grief and despair.

In 1994, three local men were murdered. In 1995, when the soldiers came, the entire community fled into the mountains, enduring cold, hunger, and sickness for over a month before returning to their village and ruined crops.

Early this year, however, the women of Morelia decided they were tired of watching their children suffer. Agreeing to send the men into hiding, they organized to defend the community themselves.

"They kill the men, and then what?" demands Esperanza's mother, Rolinda Jimenez Sanchez. One of the elected information officers of the women's committee, she explains their decision while we wait. "Without their father, my children don't eat. The men here work hard in the fields to bring food to their children. We don't want the army to kill them, so we stay here and protect them."

But remaining in the community hasn't been easy. Although the women have already turned the soldiers away once, the constant vigil means that work at home remains undone. This morning there are no tortillas. No one has had time to grind the corn, make the dough, pat out the tortillas, or cut the wood for a fire to cook them.

"But it's better than suffering in the mountains," Rolinda maintains. "We're small, but many, and we're organized. If the soldiers come, we block the road and we don't let them through."

The sun is shining strong, and the low buzzing of the jungle is muffled by the heat. I try to bribe Esperanza to let me take her picture, but she's too shy. The warmth and the quiet make me drowsy until another observer jumps suddenly to his feet, his instamatic camera swinging wildly from his wrist.

"Oh, my god," he says, "there they are." We're all on our feet then, gaping up the hill about 500 meters to where a seemingly endless convoy of heavy-duty army trucks is rounding a bend in the road. The children scramble for rocks, the observers scramble for their cameras. Meanwhile, the women pick up their sticks and strain forward, watching.

Rolinda is at my side. "Can you observers stand with us across the road?" she asks. We stretch out in a line so the soldiers can see us. The trucks stop. The air feels heavy and thick.

Back in the village, the church bell is ringing, alerting the rest of the community. The women stand beside us, and I feel safe in their tiny shadows. I hear the low rumbling of their voices. Then one of them, unable to contain her fury, shouts; "Out! We don't want you here!"

The sound carries on the still air, and then is lost in a chorus of other angry cries. Esperanza has a rock in one hand and the hem of her mother's skirt in the other. Her eyes are bright, but I can't tell if it's from fear or excitement. Perhaps both.

When the rest of the women come running from the community over the rise of the hill where we are standing, their momentum seems to envelop those in front. They all start running, furiously waving sticks and shouting at the soldiers to go home. They move up the road toward the convoy en masse- women carrying babies, children carrying sticks, old women barely able to walk .

As I run with them, fear closes my throat. But when I look up again, the trucks are hastily, clumsily turning around. They're attempting a retreat, but moving too slowly. The women catch up to the last truck, which carries about 20 soldiers armed with automatic rifles. Women beat at the truck with their sticks, while children hurl a rain of rocks that thunk against the soldiers' helmets. The convoy moves slowly on as soldiers cover their heads with their arms and turn their backs to the women.

At one point, the convoy comes to a halt and the commanding officer climbs down from a vehicle near the front. He approaches the women, trying to shout over them that he's here to bring aid, to see if they are OK, to see if they need anything.

"Like in Nueva Esperanza?" Rolinda cried. The population of this nearby community chose to flee when soldiers entered their village earlier this year. When they returned, some of their homes were destroyed, their crops were burned, and their livestock was gone.

Eventually, the officer tires of trying to shout them down. After ducking a low flying rock, he climbs back into his vehicle and the convoy moves on. Running and shouting, the women chase the trucks for nearly two miles- to make sure the soldiers know they're watching and continue their retreat.

Today, the women of Morelia have won a victory. They smile and laugh as they watch the trucks disappear into the distance, enveloped by large clouds of dust. But this is only today.

Tomorrow will be another day of waiting to see what the army does. It will also be another day of knowing that women who have chosen the same strategy in other communities haven't always been as successful. Many have suffered at the hands of soldiers. In addition, they know it isn't only the military that plagues the population in the conflict zone, but also divisions in the civilian community itself.

President Zedillo appears to have convinced himself, and a good portion of the Mexican public, that the best thing he can do for the indigenous people is rid them of the EZLN, reestablishing "law and order" in Chiapas before more Mexicans are killed. But the women here say their last and only hope for peace lies with the power of the EZLN to bring the government to the negotiating table and defend their right to autonomy.

"We can take care of ourselves, if only the army would leave us alone," Rolinda explains as we make the long walk back to town. Esperanza skips happily ahead with her friends. "Right now, that's all we're asking," says Rolinda, "to be left alone to do our work and tend to our homes."

In the meantime, the solution for the women of Morelia is the same as it's always been- organizing and sticking together. Working collectively, they struggle every day for food, shelter, healthy children, and the right to live as they choose in freedom and dignity. Some days, this means nothing more than patting out the tortillas, but sometimes it means pushing back the military. Most days, they just do whatever they must in order to survive.

Robin Flinchum is a freelance journalist helping to chronicle the struggles of women in resistance in Chiapas.