MEXICO CITY -- Sheltered from view by bushes on the side of the highway that runs north
                from Mexico City to Toluca, Lt. Col. Hildegardo Bacilio Gomez got out of an old Chevrolet
          Cavalier looking more like a banker than a man on the run.

          Short and chubby, the officer wore pressed navy blue pants, a tie and shiny, patent leather shoes.
          His round face was cleanshaven; his hair neatly trimmed. And even though he said he felt his life was
          at risk, he talked mostly in triumphant tones about how he and his fledgling dissident military
          movement had sparked a national debate that could lead to public scrutiny of the long-secretive
          Mexican armed forces.

          "This is a transcendental movement," he said. "It is like a snowball that cannot be stopped once it
          starts to roll down a hill."

          Little more than a week after leading a highly unusual demonstration by more than 50 uniformed
          soldiers to protest what they contend are human rights abuses within the military justice system,
          Bacilio Gomez, an army surgeon and father of six, has abandoned his home. He is spending the
          holidays in hiding, but not in silence.

          Immediately after the march, a rare display of internal dissent within the armed forces, officials of the
          high military command denounced Bacilio Gomez, 43, as a traitor and a self-serving criminal, who
          faces numerous charges of disobedience and insubordination. The military's chief prosecutor ordered
          the officer to appear for questioning about his movement, the Patriotic Command to Raise the
          People's Consciousness. And later, a warrant was issued for Bacilio Gomez's arrest on charges of
          desertion.

          The surgeon said he is convinced that he would be tortured or even killed if he turned himself in, so
          he fled his home and has attempted to make his case in the press.

          With the help of relatives and friends, he faxes communiques almost every day to news agencies in
          Mexico City. He meets secretly with reporters, often picking them up on isolated corners, without
          any bodyguards or escorts.

          "I am going to continue to fight," he said, in an interview along the Toluca highway over the weekend.
          "I am going to continue convincing people that if there is no justice for a military officer, for a
          surgeon, for an educated man, for a father who lives an honest life, then there will be no justice for
          anyone."

          Bacilio Gomez, who has served in the armed forces 23 years, and was sent to medical school by the
          armed forces, acknowledged that he has been charged with a dozen military crimes, but he contends
          that the charges against him are false. His problems began, he said, on Sept. 1, 1996, when he left
          his army post at the Central Military Hospital in Mexico City to treat an emergency patient in the
          private clinic he has operated for the last 10 years, which he is not prohibited from doing as a military
          doctor.

          His superior officers charged him with insubordination, jailed him for three days and cut his military
          pay to $150 from about $1,500 a month. Each time the surgeon tried to protest the charges against
          him, he said, new charges were added.

          "They take away your salary, your uniform, your job and your dignity," Bacilio Gomez said. "Imagine
          what that does to your mental state."

          In two letters, he said, he sought the help of the Mexican secretary of defense, Gen. Enrique
          Cervantes. In the most recent letter, dated Sept. 28, Gomez wrote that more than 80 percent of the
          soldiers in military prisons are innocent or were sentenced in unfair trials, and he urged the general to
          create a special commission to review his case and the cases of others.

          "Many of us are soldiers who lived a normal life and behaved in a civil and acceptable way," he
          wrote, "but because of some misunderstanding, or a poorly applied rule, or vengeance, we have
          been transformed, emotionally destroyed."

          The letter ended with these words: "Justice cannot wait."

          Cervantes did not respond, Bacilio Gomez said. The surgeon began meeting with other soldiers who
          were accused of crimes and were facing military trials to plan a demonstration.

          "What else could we do?" he said. "They had us on our knees. We had to march or we were going
          to die from frustration."

          On the afternoon of Dec. 18, Bacilio Gomez and about 50 other soldiers and officers, most of them
          in dress uniform, marched down the Reforma, one of the city's most prestigious boulevards. They
          carried Mexican flags, a banner with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron Saint of
          Mexico, and placards criticizing the army high command.

          At the end of the march, Bacilio Gomez met with officials from the leftist Party of the Democratic
          Revolution to present a list of demands, including a call to abolish military courts. The party has
          expressed support for what the movement is fighting for. The dissident officers demand that armed
          forces personnel be judged in civilian courts, just like any other citizen.

          Officials in the ministry of defense did not respond to requests for an interview about the dissident
          group. In statements to the news media last week, the military's top prosecutor, Rafael Macedo de
          la Concha, lashed out at the protesters, saying that he would launch an investigation into each person
          who marched. And in news releases, the prosecutor said that Bacilio Gomez's conduct could be
          considered "new and grave crimes."

          "This office feels the need to remind those military officers that we must put before our own personal
          interests the sovereignty of the nation, loyalty to institutions and the honor of the army," Macedo
          wrote, "values that Lt. Col. Bacilio Gomez ignores."

          Critics of the dissident movement also say that Basilio Gomez's actions appear self-serving. At the
          start of his protest, the surgeon asked the government to let him retire from the military and to
          guarantee him safe passage to Venezuela.

          Roderic Camp, a scholar at Claremont McKenna College in California who has written a book on
          the Mexican military, said that although the movement is small and its leaders have dubious motives,
          the group's protest has resonated because it is the first organized display of internal dissent within the
          armed forces.

          In the past five decades, Camp said, individual officers who spoke out against abuses were often
          stripped of their rank and thrown in jail.

          Five years ago, a brigadier general, Jose Francisco Gallardo, was jailed on charges that he
          misappropriated military supplies, including horse feed. The charges arose a few weeks after the
          general wrote an article calling for the appointment of an ombudsman to serve as an advocate on
          behalf of soldiers on issues like promotions, salaries and pension funds and to support officers
          accused of military crimes.

          Last April, the general, 50, received two 14-year prison sentences, over the protests of national and
          international human rights groups.

          Camp also noted that there is almost no civilian scrutiny of the Mexican armed forces. The secretary
          of defense and the secretary of the navy are both active-duty officers, appointed by the president,
          but only once in recent history has a military secretary been removed from office before the end of
          the six-year term, Camp said.