It's raining stones in San Agustin Loxicha, a small Zapoteco Indian town in southern Mexico, perched high above the clouds in the majestic Sierra Madre mountain range.
First the guerrillas struck, killing several soldiers in an August 1996 ambush. The raid was followed by reprisals - which were swift - as thousands of Mexican troops combed the hills, taking the entire Loxicha town council off to jail - 12 elected officials and 70 more citizens accused of involvement in the guerrilla movement.
Then hurricane Paulina paid a four-hour visit last October, tearing roofs off houses and sending farm animals plunging over cliffs. The government withheld relief aid as punishment for Loxicha citizens' bad attitude to authority.
Finally, about three weeks ago an earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale struck, taking the ground out from underneath the people's feet, quite literally, as roads were swept away, crops destroyed and mud huts twisted into bizarre post-modern sculptures.
The army abuses in neighbouring Chiapas are front-page news around the world, but the detention of the town council, beaten and dragged off to jail over a year ago, had no impact on international media. Five more people have since been "disappeared" by the security forces and at least 30 men shot dead. The repression began when a new guerrilla group, the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), ambushed an army patrol in the Loxicha region in August 1996. The one guerrilla who died during the ambush was traced back to Loxicha, leading to the army crackdown.
Once the army had seized the local authorities the state governor appointed a new regional representative who formally requested the army and police to set up bases in town.
The jailed Zapoteco Indian farmers were accused of invitation to rebellion, sabotage, murder, terrorism, conspiracy, robbery and weapons possession, enough for several life sentences each.
The prisoners' lawyer said that his clients were tortured, then forced to sign blank confessions. The entire process was conducted in Spanish, a language of which the Zapotecs have, at best, a sketchy understanding.
Several human rights groups have accused the Mexican army of 30 murders, 36 cases of rape and the sequestering of 35,000 people in the region, who cannot leave their villages for fear of army harassment.
A caravan of international human rights groups was run out of town at gunpoint last year as local gunmen, police and troops kept all outsiders away. The army has even banned the use of runners and wellington boots by the local farmers as decent footwear is considered a sure sign of guerrilla affiliation.
"This isn't going to be another Chiapas," the new town mayor told the press. "Over 3,000 international observers have passed through Chiapas state in southeast Mexico, monitoring troops stationed beside Zapatista communities."
In Loxicha town locals report bursts of machinegun fire at night, as hundreds of soldiers and police hunker down in the deserted town centre, their weapons pointing at the impenetrable fog beyond.
THE daughter of one of the Loxicha prisoners reluctantly agreed to accompany me up to the area, but insisted on sitting several rows behind me on the bus and wouldn't tell me her name. The noisy converted US schoolbus inched its way around hairpin bends, taking six hours to cover the 200km trip.
There wasn't much to tell about Loxicha town as I was lying under a bus seat all the way through, lest the army turn me back. A few miles down the road a discreet signal from the prisoner's wife told me it was time to get off. As darkness fell a guide appeared and silently took me across rivers and into the mountains, one more link in an elaborate chain stretching towards clandestine community activists.
Suddenly a clearing appeared on the side of a cliff, impossible to detect from above. A dozen men were gathered in a hut, ready to talk. They spoke in the clipped, pidgin Spanish characteristic of the Zapotec Indians and spent two hours recounting the abuses committed by army and police troops against the 36 communities that comprise the Loxicha municipality.
It's not safe here, said one young man, identified as Jose Jose, who came trotting down the hillside. We walked further into the bush to protect the men living on the run, the last villagers ready to speak out against stifling local repression.
"Do you think God sent the hurricane to punish us for the guerrillas?" asked one youth, maybe 20 years old, dressed in jeans and illicit footwear. He carefully studied my face for a reaction.
"We have to live like animals, sleeping in the brush, eating roots and berries," said Arturo Lopez, apologising for the lack of hospitality. The night was spent on the floor of a family kitchen, in an unequal combat against red mosquitoes and brown ants.
As I prepared to leave the next day the dissidents asked me to pretend I was an evangelical preacher if I met anyone else on the road. We stopped off at a new soup kitchen in the village, where women have joined forces to feed their community.
"Would you have a few words, father?" said one of the women, struggling to explain herself in Spanish. The soup kitchen needed a blessing, they said, or the food might run out. There was no way out of this, so I mumbled a few lines from a Shane MacGowan song and raised my arms in a V. It's OK to be an atheist most of the time, but you don't want to get on the wrong side of the big guy either.
The guide once more left me at the roadside where an electricity vehicle whisked me back to Oaxaca city. The streets of this stunning colonial city were filled as usual with tourists looking for handcrafts, bargaining over wall hangings and tea cosies, while the siege of Loxicha continued in the distant mountains.