Land has been the crucial issue

 BY MORRIS THOMPSON
 Knight Ridder News Service

 SAN MANUEL, Mexico -- Here, as in much of Chiapas, Mexico's poorest, most
 Indian and southernmost state, there is conflict over land.

 Two groups of Maya Indian peasants are pitted against each other. One backs
 and depends on Mexico's traditional Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI,
 which will continue to run Chiapas at least until Sunday's gubernatorial election.
 The other backs the rebel Zapatista Army for National Liberation, champions of
 land reform and Mayan rights and culture.

 For nearly a decade, these combatants have been fighting over farmland and
 Chiapas' future.

 Now, in the first statewide election since the PRI's national defeat July 2 in the
 presidential election, there is new but cautious hope for reconciling the two
 groups. It comes in the person of Pablo Salazar, 46, a charismatic federal senator
 and lawyer who has the backing of all of Chiapas' political parties except the PRI.

 Salazar has a wide lead in the polls, and his victory in Chiapas, long a PRI
 stronghold, would be further evidence of a profound pro-reform realignment in
 Mexican politics after seven decades of PRI domination.

 President-elect Vicente Fox, whose National Action Party is part of Salazar's
 coalition, has said the election would make possible new negotiations between
 the state's Zapatista faction and the national government in Mexico City, which --
 whether PRI, Spanish or Aztec -- has never fully controlled Chiapas.

 Salazar's candidacy is prompting excitement, especially among poor Indians,
 with promises of new equity in the distribution of land, infrastructure and services.
 Most of the state's 3.9 million people are Mayan rural farmers, poor, uneducated
 and dissatisfied with past governments.

 ``In the brown face of every peasant  . . .  I see a new Chiapas, a new man,
 woman and child with a new consciousness of freedom,'' Salazar told a rapt,
 mostly Mayan crowd at a recent campaign stop in Valle Morelos, about 90 miles
 southwest of San Manuel. ``These are the new Chiapans, and with them, we'll
 construct a new Chiapas.''

 Salazar blames the current economic crisis and conflict on ``bad governments''
 that, he said in an interview, took advantage of ``people who haven't had the ability
 to defend themselves.''

 ``We must have a new state of law,'' Salazar added, ``a state of law that is applied
 equally and where poverty is no longer punished.''

 The campaign has been tense. Earlier this month, Salazar supporters attacked
 his opponent, PRI Sen. Sami David, with sticks when he tried to lead a rally in
 Salazar's hometown of Soyalo. David accused Salazar of instigating the violence.

 In the past month, gangs of PRI-supporting farmers have seized Zapatista
 collectives. Zapatistas have retaliated by taking the PRI farmers' land.

 In this heated climate, the prospects of vote-buying and fraud are high, and
 several thousand Mexican and international observers will be on hand to monitor
 Sunday's balloting.

 In the contemporary conflict, the Zapatistas' small guerrilla force isn't a military
 threat, but widespread public support for its demands has made the state all but
 ungovernable. President Ernesto Zedillo has appointed a governor every year for
 the past six, as the situation of each became politically untenable.

 Zedillo agreed to a peace plan in 1996, but it has yet to be implemented. It calls
 for giving local people control over public land, most of which is in the traditional
 Mayan highlands and mountains. The land is spectacularly beautiful, but
 economically marginal.

 Recently, however, the land has shown promise to oil prospectors and
 pharmaceutical companies seeking new compounds from exotic plants, and for
 the further development of hydroelectricity.

 Chiapas produces 55 percent of Mexico's hydroelectricity, and 20 percent of all
 its electricity. But, in a telling fact of Chiapan life, most of the state remains
 unelectrified.