SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico (AP) -- An armed gang of
                  ruling-party supporters shot and killed one pro-opposition farmer and wounded
                  two others in the southern state of Chiapas Wednesday.

                  The attack marks the latest in a long series of clashes in Chiapas motivated by
                  political, personal and land disputes that turned deadly as government supporters
                  armed themselves following a leftist guerrilla uprising here in 1994.

                  A group of farmers who support a leftist party came under fire early Wednesday
                  as they went to work their fields in the rural township of Venustiano Carranza,
                  about 50 miles (80 kms) south of San Cristobal.

                  One man died of a pistol shot to the head, and two fellow members of his Casa
                  del Pueblo group were seriously wounded.

                  Police arrested 21 members of the group that attacked them, a gang allied with
                  local landowners and ranchers known as the San Bartolome Alliance.

                  "A bunch of people from the Casa del Pueblo went to work in the corn fields,
                  but the paramilitaries who live there opened fire on them," said Casa del Pueblo
                  spokesman Antonio de la Torre.

                  De la Torre said the state police intervened quickly to stop the attack, which he
                  said was aimed at taking over the opposition group's land.

                  Algel Hidalgo Espinosa said the Casa de Pueblo supporters would try to avoid the
                  kind of reprisals that have bloodied the state, but threatened to take justice into
                  their own hands if police didn't round up all suspects in the attack within 24
                  hours.

                  The Zapatistas rebel group rebelled here in 1994 demanding more rights for the
                  region's impoverished Indians, and though the conflict has been halted by a
                  cease-fire since that year, scores of people have been killed in clashes between
                  rebels and armed pro-government paramilitary squads.

                  The latest violence comes just weeks after an opposition candidate won the
                  governorship of the troubled state for the first time, toppling the ruling
                  Institutional Revolutionary Party with a promise to move toward peace with the
                  Zapatistas.

                  Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.