We do not accept people from the government. While the EZLN and its supporters encourage the observers, the Zedillo government is on the attack against them. The Mexican government is waging a war of genocide and does not want eyewitnesses to tell the world about it. The number of international observers today may be as few as 45. But observers applying for an FM3 are usually turned down.
Most people come to Mexico on a tourist visa.
That has now become a pretext for expulsion. At most military checkpoints we encountered immigration agents as well as Judicial Police. In April the newspaper Novedades actually published a list, complete with visa numbers, of 47 foreigners acting as human-rights observers. While Zedillo attacks foreigners sympathetic to the Indigenous people of Chiapas, the real interventionists in Mexico are the International Monetary Fund and U.S. corporations. That has set off a fire sale of national industries once protected by the Mexican Constitution.