For those who live and work in the "autonomous" village of Polho, in country identified as supporting the Zapatistas, questions of who governs and how are not at all abstract. Although they have been accused of wanting to separate themselves from the nation, their true interest is in genuine equal status within their own country. Second of two parts. PNS Central America editor Mary Jo McConahay has reported from Latin America for the National Catholic Reporter, Choices, Mother Jones and other publications for over a decade. This article is the second of two parts.

POLHO, MEXICO -- This village, like many communities across Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, calls itself "autonomous." These towns are openly support bases for the Zapatistas -- "our army" the residents say.

Autonomous cities and towns call for implementation of accords signed between the Zapatistas and the central government in 1996 -- accords recognizing indigenous culture and rights that have never been implemented.

So autonomy means a declaration of independence from the state, its officials, justice system and even financial aid or other support. "The government is stained with the blood of the indigenous," say Luciano, the town leader.

"It feeds and protects the paramilitaries who put us here," says another man, displaced from his village.

Yet these "autonomos" consider themselves deeply Mexican, and want to be recognized in the constitution. They say they do not want to divide the country, but to strengthen Indian control over their own affairs.

Those who live here must accept Zapatista authority, but they do not have to be Zapatistas -- more than 1500 of the Polho's 7000 inhabitants are neutrals belonging to a group called "the Bees" which takes a principled nonviolent stand. (The 45 massacred at Acteal last December were Bees.) Others are members of the political parties, including the PRI, who refuse to support paramilitaries.

The system can seem bizarre. Polho's autonomous municipality exists parallel to an official council which sits in the departmental capital. When the official council's PRI president was arrested and charged with responsibility for the Acteal murders, he was replaced by another PRI member.

In autonomous Polho, despite the air of informality, there is a president, nine councilors, two mayors, a deputy mayor, a judge, deputy judge, civil registrar, council secretary and 15 police. Are there elections?

"We don't operate with urns and ballots," Luciano says, "We do things democratically."

This is a voice of experience. Over the years, local people have come to see elections as little more than periodic exercises in fraud, vote-buying, and inevitably a PRI victory.

According to Luciano, "When the term of office is up we call an assembly, everybody comes, and the result is others take their places. Everything is done in front of everybody.

"If a man is nominated, people consider whether he is the kind who would hit his wife or keep money from her and that, too, goes into deciding whether he has the character to hold office."

Faustina is 18, and learning to be a "health promoter." In one way she mirrors the past -- she speaks only Tzotzil Maya, is the youngest of eight children, has only a sixth grade education. She watched her father die at age 47. She wears no white coat, only the traditional costume of the region, and laces her braids with ribbon.

But she is also a young woman of the moment. "I wanted to become a midwife, to help the pregnant women, so they wouldn't be afraid to come for help with their health, like they would be to a man." She learns about diagnosis, medication and treatment from other promoters.

Faustina does not use political language but -- like others of her generation -- she has been transformed by first hand experience with violence. Whatever the fate of the Zapatista movement, they may never again feel at home in an environment of PRI authority.

She says she will "never forget" the moment everything changed. "We didn't know the paramilitaries were coming to attack, and when we saw them they were already there, and so they found us unprepared, just going about our day, each one in our houses. They shot my neighbor, Jose Gomez Guzman, because he was a Zapatista sympathizer. He was 29, and I saw when they killed him with bullets."

Half an hour's walk away from Polho, in a valley, families who fled the town of Los Chorros live in tents made of donated canvas reclaimed from advertising billboards. Antonio Vasquez pulls up a couple of rough hewn blocks of wood, apologizing that "all the chairs are back in the village."

He is 26, but looks much older. "Yesterday afternoon we buried my son, just three months old," he says. "That's why I'm still crying sometimes."

It was too cold for sleeping on the ground, Vasquez says, but there were no beds. When the baby began to cough and fade, they did what they could without medicines. A trip to the nearest hospitals did not help. "Your baby is dying," the doctor told Vasquez.

Vasquez sounds more bewildered than vengeful about the PRI supporters who forced his family from Los Chorros. "They don't want to see our faces in the villages and we don't know what to do. All we want is to find a way to give food to our children, to have a little something more."

Sometimes Vasquez can only express himself in Tzotzil, and turns to Ernesto, a bright 13-year-old, to translate into Spanish.

Ernesto has his own confidence about the future. "We have our own army, you know," he says. This seems to be a matter of faith, as there is no visible armed presence in Polho. Can they defend themselves?

"If the paramilitaries come here we will have to leave -- I don't know to where," Luciano says. He, too, has confidence in the Zapatistas -- but the guerrillas have avoided combat, avoided even economic sabotage because they want to be seen as defenders of an indigenous movement. "If our army tells us, 'leave here,' we do it because we are under their command."

It is evening. Smoke from the newcomers' hearth fires fills the valley like fog. Radios go silent one by one, doors close. Watchmen fan out to guard the perimeter. The Tzotzil's traditional guardian is the bat. It seems a fitting symbol in the dark night that has fallen on these hamlets.