ACTEAL, Mexico (Reuters) -- Children in this remote southern Mexican
                  village hope Christmas this year is a bit happier than the holiday they spent
                  last year trying to understand why their friends and families had been
                  butchered.

                  Bullets shattered the children's world last year when pro-government
                  paramilitaries stormed this hamlet just three days before Christmas and
                  massacred 45 Indians for their alleged support of nearby Zapatista rebels.

                  Twenty-one women, 15 children and nine men were hacked to death with
                  machetes or shot at point-blank range, including one woman who was eight
                  months pregnant. The killing took eight hours.

                  "We can make the kids forget for a short while, but not forever. They cry a
                  lot, especially the young ones," says Rosario Bautista, a 29-year-old
                  volunteer from central Mexico who came to work here just after the Dec. 22
                  killings.

                  A year after Mexico's worst massacre in modern times, the children and
                  their parents are haunted by the memory of the killing and, more importantly,
                  by the fear it could happen again.

                  Despite the arrest of more than 100 people for the massacre, residents say
                  paramilitaries still roam the nearby hills and shout slurs or fire volleys of
                  bullets into the air to frighten villagers.

                  "We wait. There is nothing more to do," said Antonio Gutierrez Perez, a
                  local leader. "We know they are still out there, including some of the ones
                  who killed our families."

                  FIVE YEARS ON, VIOLENCE CONTINUES

                  Acteal's victims are only part of a growing list of dead from Mexico's
                  Zapatista uprising in its poorest state. Led by the charismatic leader Marcos,
                  the rebels staged a brief war in early 1994 to improve the lot of Mexico's 8
                  million Indians and force the country's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party
                  (PRI), in power since 1929, out of office.

                  While just 150 people died in two weeks of actual fighting, hundreds more
                  have since died in simmering disputes between rebel supporters and
                  paramilitaries tied to the PRI and wealthy landowners. The rebels themselves
                  and the government have been locked in fruitless peace talks.

                  On Sunday, the Mexican Attorney General's office released a 145-page
                  report detailing its investigation into the Acteal massacre. The government's
                  report attributes the bloodbath to simmering political and religious disputes
                  between villagers that were exacerbated following the Zapatista National
                  Liberation Army's uprising.

                  Last week, masked gunmen killed an 11-year-old boy and wounded seven
                  others in an ambush in the nearby municipality of El Bosque. The state
                  government and rebels blamed each other.

                  Fearing another massacre on the anniversary of the Acteal killings, more than
                  100 other Zapatista rebel supporters in El Bosque fled the town of Union
                  Progreso on Dec. 15 after paramilitaries approached at night and detonated
                  a grenade.

                  "There were a lot of them. They came at night and we could see their
                  flashlights. We were scared, we didn't want another Acteal," said Antonio, a
                  24-year-old Zapatista supporter who did not want his last name used.

                  NO PEACE AND NO JUSTICE

                  With names like "Peace and Justice", paramilitary groups have forced an
                  estimated 10,000 people from their homes in Chiapas and into crudely-built
                  refugee camps that have no running water, little food and plenty of disease.

                  The refugees around Acteal tell the same story: groups of men came to their
                  villages to ask for help and money to fight the Zapatistas. If a village refused,
                  torment would begin.

                  "A lot of people came. They started shooting, burning the homes and
                  robbing everything inside. We took what we could and left," Marcelino
                  Perez Ruiz, 38, told Reuters.

                  A report issued last week by a prominent Church-backed human rights
                  group charged the government with fostering the creation of paramilitary
                  groups following the 1994 uprising in order to blunt the Zapatistas' growing
                  influence.

                  "The existence of paramilitary groups and the impunity with which they act is
                  an important part of the government's counter-insurgency strategy," the Fray
                  Bartolome Human Rights Center said in the report.

                  However, Chiapas state Gov. Roberto Albores said neither the PRI nor the
                  government backs paramilitary groups.

                  "They are not operating any longer. And the evidence is that there are no
                  new refugees," he told Reuters.

                  But among those arrested for last year's massacre were state police,
                  including a retired army general, who stood by without doing anything during
                  the massacre even though they were nearby.

                  Top state officials also heard rumors there would be a massacre but did
                  nothing to prevent it, according to a government investigation. They have yet
                  to be charged with a crime, but have been barred from holding public office.

                  For the 50 or so refugee families that live in tiny makeshift wooden shacks in
                  Acteal, there is no going home. They live day to day, with no electricity or
                  running water. With no land to work, they rely on aid for food, eating only
                  beans, rice, crackers, chilies and tortillas (maize pancakes).

                  No one here has eaten any meat since they left their villages last year. And
                  more than half the children are malnourished, according to doctors from the
                  French nonprofit group Medecins Sans Frontiers.

                  According to residents, eight adults and five children in the refugee camps
                  have died of diseases including typhoid or diarrhea in the past year.

                  "This is a war of attrition. These people are being starved out," said the
                  volunteer Bautista. Of 10 volunteers that arrived with her in Acteal, only
                  three remain. The rest found it too depressing.

                  THE HORROR

                  The only brick structure in Acteal is a simple one-story building where the
                  remains of last year's victims are buried under a concrete floor. Incense
                  hangs in the air and pictures of the dead line the wall.

                  Mariano Luna Ruiz, 36, survived the killing only because he lay motionless
                  for four hours under a pile of bodies, including those of his wife and
                  two-year-old son. It took him an hour to crawl out from under the bloody
                  corpses.

                  "We are still afraid. We have no weapons except the Bible," Luna Ruiz told
                  Reuters during a recent visit.

                  Piety made the victims easy targets for the paramilitary squads. Many were
                  from nearby towns and fled to Acteal because of rumors there would be a
                  massacre, huddling together to fast and pray in a flatboard wooden shack
                  that serves as a church.

                  Today, the church stands empty, filled only by tiny rays of light that pierce
                  the dark interior from hundreds of small bullet holes.

                  The piety continues. Vicente Jimenez Santis, 46, lost his wife and
                  17-year-old daughter in the massacre. But he says he never considered
                  revenge.

                  "I don't want any more trouble, any more bloodshed," he said.

                   Copyright 1998 Reuters.