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November 7, 1991

Tuxtla Journal; The Power and the Glory, With a Singular Twist

By TIM GOLDEN,

In the lush highlands that connect Mexico and Guatemala, the value of land is measured in the patchwork of tiny plots that rises more steeply than farmers would seem able to climb.

For decades, the mountains and surrounding jungle have been a setting for undeclared war between landowners and Indian peasants, and a parallel conflict between liberal priests who have encouraged the peasants to organize and heavy-handed governors sent from Mexico City to keep control.

But the jailing of a priest here on charges of leading a land invasion by peasants has evoked the familiar themes in a quite different context.

This time the Governor, though a great-nephew of the anticlerical tyrant who inspired Graham Greene's novel "The Power and the Glory," is something of a progressive. The bishop, an enemy of successive governors, is trying to temper his charges of abuse. And the battle still simmering in the remote mountain town of Simojovel is only in part about the problem of land; mostly, townspeople say, it is a political dispute.

The 52-year-old priest, Joel Padron, was provisionally absolved by a Federal court here on Tuesday. But as he sits in jail pending the final ruling of a state judge, his case has served as a reminder that much as Mexico has changed of late, southernmost Mexico has remained a world apart. 'Priest Was a Communist'

Like everywhere else in the country, television sets flickered in Chiapas State on Friday with images of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari saying in his annual address that the time had come to bring economic progress to the countryside and a rational end to the Government's feud with the church. But in Simojovel the next day, pickup trucks full of armed men were back by the central plaza, keeping an uneasy peace.

"That priest was a Communist," whispered a 67-year-old man, who told of losing his job some years ago when landless peasants seized the farm where he worked. His bitterness was echoed in coarse red letters on the church wall that demanded, "Death to Joel Padron."

But in the crumbling rectory, a catechist named Victoriano said, "They hate him because he is on the side of the poor."

According to the court testimony of a woman named Maura Urbina, Father Padron did not merely stir up the peasants who invaded her land. Yelling death threats and wielding machetes, she said, he and seven others killed chickens, destroyed a patch of radishes, stole a tape recorder and caused damages of $2,604.

Twenty-two other people living on the land were cited as corroborating her account. Father Padron's parish secretary and five others contended that he was nowhere near the site when the takeover happened. The state judge heard from only three before ordering eight arrests, although only Father Padron was picked up.

Most of the arguing has taken place not in court, however, but in the newspapers, and has involved not lawyers but the bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas, Father Padron's diocese, and the Chiapas Governor.

The bishop, Samuel Ruiz Garcia, has been outspoken in his defense of the Indian peasants, and priests in his diocese have encouraged the peasants to unite and press their legal rights to land. While some priests have gone further than others, leftist peasant groups and political parties have almost always capitalized on the organization.

The Governor, Jose Patrocinio Gonzalez Blanco Garrido has a distinctive heritage. His father, Salomon Gonzalez Blanco, was Secretary of Labor for a dozen years before governing Chiapas from 1978 to 1980, and his great-uncle, Tomas Garrido Canabal, governed the neighboring state of Tabasco, organizing the anticlerical persecution that provided the backdrop for Mr. Greene's 1940 novel. A Sense of Modernity

But by the accounts of politicians, businessmen and even liberal clergymen in Chiapas, Mr. Gonzalez has run the state with a sense of modernity. He has given provisional titles to most of the peasants who were illegally occupying more than 400 farms when he took office.

But two senior officials said Mr. Gonzalez had insisted that new agricultural investment in the state hinges on law and order. Before Father Padron's arrest, one of the officials said, he had vowed to stop the land seizures that have been epidemic in Chiapas since the mid-1970's. And though Bishop Ruiz has said that official human rights abuses in the state are notably less crude than before, his criticism has sullied the image of a new Chiapas that Mr. Gonzalez has tried to paint.

Until Tuesday, Mr. Gonzalez appeared to have effectively resisted pressures from Mexico City to resolve the issue. Well before Tuesday, though, Miss Urbina's story seemed to be coming undone.

Church officials and more than a dozen other people in Simojovel said Miss Urbina had invaded the disputed land herself as a leader of a leftist peasant organization. She split from the group last year, they said, joining up with the town officials who shepherded her case against Father Padron, and parceled out most of the invaded land to her supporters.

"This is not about land," said Pablo Hernandez Martinez, 55, one of the peasants who last weekend were occupying only the two small lots claimed by Ms. Urbina and one of her associates. "This is a political fight."

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