After their guest ranch is seized, U.S. couple find no refuge in Mexican law

By BRENDAN M. CASE / The Dallas Morning News

OCOSINGO, Mexico – Ten years ago, Ellen Jones and Glen Wersch moved to Mexico to seek their fortune. For nine years, they lived a dream come true.

The former Peace Corps volunteers built an ecologically minded guest ranch called Rancho Esmeralda. They drew visitors from all over the world to rustic cabins
with no flush toilets.

They plowed their life savings into Chiapas, a captivating but tormented state in southern Mexico. And they lost it all earlier this year to a land invasion by the state's
Zapatista rebels.

"We made the mistake of investing too heavily in our business," said Mr. Wersch wistfully as he lit a cigarette. "You're supposed to diversify your investments, right? We didn't. We spent everything on the ranch."

The saga of Rancho Esmeralda is a tale of two plucky entrepreneurs whose unlikely success brought them betrayal, despair and a bitter dose of government hypocrisy. It also shows how Mexico, despite an emerging democracy and international commitments such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, can still be a legal no man's land.

"The legal system remains a liability," said Rogelio Ramírez de la O, the director of Ecanal, a Mexico City consulting firm. "There has been some improvement at the top level, at the Supreme Court. But the system is still slow, cumbersome and worrying for investors."

Certainly there are signs that the rule of law is growing stronger. Mexico overhauled countless laws and regulations in the wake of NAFTA.

President Vicente Fox's victory three years ago cemented electoral democracy after 71 years in which a single political party dominated nearly all Mexican institutions, including the judiciary.

"There's a lot more certainty for investors now," said Eduardo Solís, an investment promotion official in the Economy Ministry. "Pretty much all laws have been upgraded."

But enforcing contracts and property rights has challenged everyone from small-time investors to a Texas-based waste disposal company.

And so far, the only certainty for Ms. Jones and Mr. Wersch is that they've lost everything.

Hailing from Boise, Idaho, the U.S. couple came to Ocosingo in 1993 as pioneers of macadamia nut farming.

They had learned to grow macadamia trees in the Dominican Republic during a two-year stint with the Peace Corps. They thought the nuts would thrive around Ocosingo, with its verdant fields, sapphire skies and morning clouds that shroud nearby peaks.

They also wanted to continue a lifelong love affair with Mexico, after visiting numerous times in a beat-up old school bus.

"You're always a tourist," said Mr. Wersch, a lanky, soft-spoken 50-year-old with a graying ponytail and dirt under his fingernails. "We wanted to be part of the community."

But macadamia trees take most of a decade to produce nuts. To earn a living on their 26 acres of land, Ms. Jones and Mr. Wersch built some rustic cabins,
complete with outhouses, hoping to attract a few rugged tourists. Their first guest arrived July 9, 1996.

And Rancho Esmeralda – midway between the colonial gem of San Cristóbal de las Casas and the Mayan ruins of Palenque – took off. Birdwatchers, backpackers
and other tourists came from Mexico, the United States and Europe, paying about $30 a night.

In 2002, Lonely Planet, a travel guidebook company, ranked Rancho Esmeralda as one of the 10 best places to stay in all of Mexico.

We were doing what we wanted to do," said Ms. Jones, 55. "It was the perfect piece of land."

Zapatistas arise

At the same time, however, a spasm of violence and instability was wracking Chiapas. The unrest had its roots in Mexico's long heritage of racism and economic
exploitation.

On Jan. 1, 1994, the day NAFTA took effect, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation rose up in arms. Wearing black ski masks, the poor, indigenous rebels
called for Indian rights after centuries of misery, disease and discrimination.

Subcomandante Marcos, their charismatic, pipe-puffing spokesman, warned that Mexico was forgetting its most vulnerable citizens in its drive to sign NAFTA and
join the global economy.

Some 150 people died in two weeks of fighting, including deadly gun battles in Ocosingo. By mid-January, though, the Mexican government called a cease-fire.

In the following years, red-faced government officials poured billions of dollars into roads, schools and health clinics in Chiapas. The Zapatistas, for their part,
maintained control over a swath of jungle and several dozen "autonomous communities."

The uprising also sparked a wave of Zapatista land invasions, adding to Chiapas' countless land disputes. Due to high birthrates since the 1960s, the state's
population has ballooned – from about 1.6 million in 1970 to about 4 million now – far outstripping the land supply for poor farmers. Corn yields remain low.

Zapatista supporters maintained that they were just taking what was rightfully theirs. For centuries, indigenous people were forced into remote mountain areas by
encroaching white and mixed-race settlers who seized the best land.

In Ocosingo, the invasions affected everyone from large landowners to small-time ranchers. Héctor Albores, the head of the local ranchers' association, lost a
1,200-acre spread shortly after the 1994 uprising.

A half-dozen land invasions have occurred around Ocosingo this year, he says, after several years of relative calm. The Zapatistas have also unveiled plans for
increased self-rule.

"Nobody wants to invest any money here," he said, fretting about further damage to the local economy. "If I put a few hundred cattle on a ranch, who's to say I
won't lose them a few months from now?"

It didn't take long for Rancho Esmeralda to come face to face with the Zapatistas. In the mid-1990s, land squatters founded a small settlement near the ranch called
Nuevo Jerusalén, or New Jerusalem.

The settlement's relationship with the Zapatista Army is unclear. Numerous villagers recently declined to comment. So did Civil Liaison, a nonprofit group that
supports the Zapatistas.

But a large mural of Zapatista fighters adorns Nuevo Jerusalén's tiny grocery store. The hamlet is part of the Zapatistas' January 1 Autonomous Community.

On one side of the village, a sprawling army base sits behind steel fences and coils of razor wire. On the other side lies Rancho Esmeralda.

Cordial history

For years, Ms. Jones, Mr. Wersch and the local townspeople had maintained cordial relations.

"I once got their power generator working when they were having a party," Mr. Wersch said. "I took several women into town to have their babies. They knocked
on the door in the middle of the night."

But things changed just before Christmas last year.

Village leaders informed Mr. Wersch that the ranch was on their ancestral land, intimating they would take it over on Dec. 31. Mr. Wersch replied that Rancho
Esmeralda predated Nuevo Jerusalén.

Seeking help, Mr. Wersch and Ms. Jones launched a flurry of calls and faxes to state and federal officials. The U.S. Embassy advised Americans and other
foreigners to leave the ranch.

The invasion failed to materialize. On Jan. 30, however, Nuevo Jerusalén villagers snatched Ernesto Cruz, an indigenous Rancho Esmeralda employee, and allegedly
beat him. They returned him with a handwritten letter to Ms. Jones and Mr. Wersch.

"We don't want you here in this municipality anymore because you took our patrimony," the letter said. "We stopped your employee so you'd see we're not playing
around. ... Next time, it's going to be worse if you don't understand us."

Property and law

That day, Chiapas Gov. Pablo Salazar was in Europe drumming up foreign investment. He went there with Mr. Fox, who spoke before the International Court of
Justice in the Netherlands.

"The law is one of the highest manifestations of human civilization," Mr. Fox said then.

The invasion of Rancho Esmeralda finally came on Feb. 28. About 150 men with machetes took it over, two employees handed over the keys, and no one was hurt.

That day, Mr. Wersch frantically called Emilio Zebadúa, the No. 2 state official after Mr. Salazar. Mr. Zebadúa said he was busy hosting an important visitor: Mr.
Fox, who was in Chiapas to promote legal security for small rural landowners.

"This matter of patrimony, of owning a property, is very important for people," Mr. Fox said in a speech that day. "It makes us feel safe to know we have
something."

By the time he uttered those words, Ms. Jones and Mr. Wersch had lost Rancho Esmeralda.

"So much love and care went into everything on that ranch," Ms. Jones said. "A few times in March, when we stopped living there, I woke up in the middle of the
night and I couldn't find Glen. So I went to look for him, and I found him sobbing on a lawn chair."

One of the employees who gave the Zapatistas the keys to the ranch, Vicente Sánchez, came from Nuevo Jerusalén. His parents kicked him out. He has since joined
the army.

Development experts say small-scale eco-tourism is a promising business for Chiapas, which boasts lakes, waterfalls, mountains, jungles and Mayan ruins. Two
development bank executives recently visited Mr. Wersch, seeking to emulate his success.

Last year, however, the Zapatistas criticized eco-tourism in a statement. Its proponents, they said, were "fools trying to change our lives so that we will cease being
what we are: indigenous campesinos with our own ideas and culture."

Subcomandante Marcos said tourism would turn Chiapas into an "amusement park for foreigners."

As for Rancho Esmeralda, neighbors have reported that five families from Nuevo Jerusalén are living there. Recently, however, the property appeared deserted.
Red, white and green signs proclaimed it Zapatista property.

Ms. Jones and Mr. Wersch reckon they invested $500,000 in the ranch. They have spent months negotiating with Chiapas officials to get it back or to receive
compensation for it.

State officials have not returned their phone calls since June. Mr. Zebadúa resigned to run for Congress, winning a seat for the left-wing Party of the Democratic
Revolution in July. Rubén Velásquez, his successor, did not reply to numerous inquiries from The Dallas Morning News.

Ms. Jones and Mr. Wersch are now $8,000 in debt and trying to make ends meet by running a modest hotel, also called Esmeralda, in Ocosingo.

They're considering whether to seek compensation by suing the state government in court. They might even investigate whether they can sue under NAFTA.

"But doing that would require a war chest," said Mr. Wersch. "We're broke. I don't have a lawyer. I'm my lawyer."