By IRVIN MOLOTSKY

          WASHINGTON -- A foundation said Wednesday that it would provide the money to
          replace a federal grant that was canceled when the chairman of the National Endowment
          for the Arts learned that it was for a children's book written by a Mexican guerrilla leader.

          The president of the foundation, J. Patrick Lannan Jr., said it would give $15,000 to subsidize the
          printing of an English translation of a Spanish book by the rebel leader, Subcomandante Marcos.

          The chairman of the arts endowment, William Ivey, canceled the grant on Tuesday when told of it by
          a reporter.

          Ivey said he was worried that some of the endowment money might find its way to the Zapatista
          guerrillas in Chiapas. Marcos is their political mastermind and military strategist.

          The publisher, the Cinco Puntos Press of El Paso, said it would not receive any of the money. A
          co-owner, Bobby Byrd, said Marcos had declared that he did not believe in copyright and had
          formally waived his rights to income from the book.

          In 1989, the foundation, named for a late Chicago executive, J. Patrick Lannan, gave $35,000 to the
          Washington Project for the Arts so that it could exhibit homoerotic photographs by Robert
          Mapplethorpe in a show that the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington had canceled. Like the
          Marcos book, the Corcoran exhibition had received some of its money from the arts endowment.

          The new book, "The Story of Color," has nothing to do with the Chiapas rebellion. It is a folk tale
          about Mexican gods who took a gray world and filled it with brilliant color.

          A spokeswoman for the endowment, Cherie Simon, said Wednesday that the rejection was the only
          one in Ivey's first year as chairman and that he had approved 1,500 others.

          One panelist who approved the grant for the book, Winter Prosapio, defended the panel's decision.
          "When we publish works that are translations, we are going to have dissident voices, voices that are
          not politically correct," Ms. Prosapio said from her office near Austin, Texas "Clearly, we felt that it
          was worthwhile. None of us had any notion that by doing this that we were supporting armed
          rebellion. It's still my view, perhaps even more so."

          Ms. Prosapio said she understood Ivey's cancellation, because "the NEA has come under criticism
          for this kind of thing."

          But she stood with the panel's decision. "I think our kindergartens are safe," she said.

          Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, who has defended the endowment from attempts by other Republicans
          to kill it, said Ivey had done "exactly the right thing in stopping the grant."

          "That book isn't appropriate for American children," Regula said.

          He heads the House subcommittee that approves spending for the arts endowment.

          "I don't think the endowment should finance things that people would find offensive," Regula said.

          Among those people, he said, were congressional opponents of the agency, and he said, "There's no
          use putting your finger in people's eyes."

          The dispute has piqued interest in the book. Cinco Puntos said it received so many inquiries
          Wednesday that it told its distributor to send out the 5,000 copies that had been printed instead of
          waiting for the publication date in May. The books on sale bear the logo of the arts endowment.
 

                     Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company