By JULIA PRESTON

          MEXICO CITY -- The Zapatista rebels, in a bold challenge to the
          government, sent more than 1,000 unarmed followers Thursday
          to retake the town hall in an Indian village in Chiapas state only one day
          after they were ousted from the building by the state police.

          At noon, three columns of rebels, their faces covered with their hallmark
          black ski masks, marched into the cobblestone square in San Andres
          Larrainzar, in the Indian highlands of Chiapas and confronted 150 state
          police officers in riot gear who were guarding the town hall.

          Witnesses said the Zapatistas were empty-handed, not even carrying
          sticks or stones. But they battered several police cars with their fists and
          shoved the policemen to move them away from the building. No injuries
          or arrests were reported.

          A state government communique said that the police had withdrawn to
          the edge of the village "to avoid a confrontation with furious
          demonstrators who pounded on their vehicles and shouted slogans at
          them in an obvious attempt to provoke violence."

          State officials said they were seeking arrest warrants for the Zapatistas
          who damaged the police cars.

          After 10 months of tense standoff in Chiapas, the Zapatistas moved to
          reassert their claim to the village, which is a central political symbol
          because it was the site, in 1995 and 1996, of peace talks between the
          rebels and the government that produced the first and only peace
          agreement for Chiapas.

          Six months later the Zapatistas pulled out of the talks after the
          government sought to renegotiate some terms.

          Last year the government staged military operations to break up several
          Zapatista-run townships. The last one, in June, ended in a shooting battle
          with Zapatistas in which at least eight people were killed.

          Opposition forces occupied the mayor's offices in San Andres Larrainzar
          in December 1995 after Zapatista supporters won an election conducted
          according to Maya Indian custom that was not recognized by state
          elections officials. Since then the Zapatistas have boycotted all other
          elections, so candidates from the governing party, the Institutional
          Revolutionary Party, or PRI, have won the mayor's post by
          overwhelming but not representative majorities.

          A Zapatista mayor was nominally presiding in the town hall over what the
          rebels called an "autonomous township." But since the government cut off
          all public funds to the rebel mayor, the Zapatista administration had been
          virtually paralyzed for months.

          On Wednesday, in an operation without violence or arrests, 300 state
          police officers recaptured the town hall, expelling the only two Zapatistas
          who were there, both security guards.

          The police installed an Indian mayor elected by the PRI faction, Marcos
          Diaz Nunez. Thursday Diaz withdrew along with the police and entered a
          police complaint against the rebels.

          The state government asserted that most of the Zapatista protesters were
          from other townships, not San Andres Larrainzar. But a rebel leader who
          gave his name only as Benjamin said most of the demonstrators came
          from a nearby village that is a Zapatista stronghold.

          In a speech before the Zapatista crowd, Benjamin accused the Chiapas
          governor, Roberto Albores Guillen, of "cowardice and bad faith" and of
          trying to provoke bloodshed between Indians.

          Most of the rebels withdrew by midafternoon, leaving a contingent of
          several hundred to guard the mayor's office.