One dead, 11 hurt in southern Mexico clashes

At least one person was killed and 11 injured in clashes between a holdover group of the Zapatista rebel movement and rivals with ties to the local government, officials said today.
The confrontation, which occurred around dawn yesterday in the town of La Realidad, appears to have been sparked by a dispute over transportation in the densely rainforested region.
The skirmish apparently erupted following a standoff over possession of a car and access to a road linking various communities in the remote region.
"There is one person dead -- a member of the Zapatista autonomous council -- and 11 people injured," an anonymous Chiapas government official told AFP.

La Realidad, a stronghold of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), is located some 100 kilometres from its municipal seat of Las Margarita, and is cut off from much of the rest of region.
A meeting has been scheduled between the two groups to try to resolve the conflict, mediated by local human rights officials.
The EZLN came to prominence in the early 1990s as an armed group defending indigenous people in Chiapas, a region with some of Mexico's highest rates of poverty and illiteracy.