The army moved briskly Friday to regain rebel-held territory as the government held out the promise of amnesty for rebels but hunted the movement's top leaders.
Army troops encountered no opposition as they entered the southern village of Guadalupe Tepeyac, the de facto rebel capital in Chiapas state, at midday Friday, the government news agency Notimex said.The rebels apparently slipped further back into the Lacandon Jungle without risking a fight.
Armored vehicles were moving through Las Margaritas, one of the last towns before entering the sparsely populated canyon country that the rebels claim. Troops turned back reporters who tried to follow them beyond Las Margaritas.
Rebel sympathizers said the troop movements could lead to open battle, ending a cease-fire that has kept the rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico's poorest region, quiet for the past year.
"This activity makes us once again fearful that war will start again here," said Amado Avendano Figueroa, head of a dissident "alternative" government based here.
President Ernesto Zedillo on Thursday released the alleged identity of the rebellion's leader, known as Subcomandante Marcos, and ordered the arrest of Marcos and other top rebels.
Marcos' whereabouts were not known. But the attorney general's office said it peacefully arrested a man it identified as one of the top five rebel commanders, Jorge Santiago Santiago, in the Chiapas town of Teopisca.
Santiago, 50, told reporters at the scene that he did not know Marcos. He earlier denied links to the Zapatista rebels.