Working under a hot sun, dozens of men are cleaning the mud and dust from
                 their yards and repairing the thatch-roof huts that they fled in February 9, 1995,
                 when the army seized the area.

                 Some bring in wood aboard stake-bed trucks. Others prepared food and a
                 traditional drink called pozole made of ground corn and water. Children play on
                 rusted playground equipment.

                 Guadalupe Tepeyac is no longer a ghost town.

                 The army raid in 1995 was meant to capture Subcomandante Marcos, military
                 leader of the Zapatista National Liberation Army.

                 Instead, it sent about 100 rebel families fleeing eastward, further into the
                 Lacondon jungle canyons of Chiapas state. The rebels reestablished their
                 unofficial headquarters at La Realidad an hour or so along a rutted dirt road to
                 the east.

                 The army tore down the open-air theater the Zapatistas had built here to host
                 events of supporters.

                 The army used Guadalupe Tepeyac as a major base in the region until April,
                 when new President Vicente Fox ordered a withdrawal meant to help entice the
                 Zapatistas back into peace talks with the government.

                 The wooden building that served as a school is being rebuilt and the deteriorated
                 huts are being painted in pink, blue and green beneath new tin roofs that glint in
                 the sun.

                 Horses, burros, dogs and chickens once again roam along the dirt streets.

                 The centerpiece of the town, the once-empty federal hospital opened in 1993 by
                 President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, a few months before the Zapatista revolt, is
                 now working at full capacity.

                 A local rebel official, who refused to give his name, banned photography in
                 town, but said more families would be returning soon.

                   Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.