By JULIA PRESTON

          MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's Zapatista rebels, in a characteristically imaginative but one-sided
          attempt to put their isolated movement back in the limelight, held a nationwide referendum
          Sunday on their proposals for peace with the government.

          The four questions on the ballot were so politically loaded that they were likely to reveal little about
          Mexicans' current views on the rebels' 5-year-old organization -- a hybrid between an armed
          guerrilla force and a grass-roots Indian rights movement.

          But preparations for the vote over the last 10 days brought much political theater. And the news
          media blitz made it clear that the Zapatistas and their chief strategist, known as Subcomandante
          Marcos -- who did not leave Chiapas -- retain a flair for populist politics.

          The Zapatistas organized balloting in every county in Mexico -- and 5,000 masked Zapatista
          followers propagated their peace proposals across the country. They were allowed to travel outside
          Chiapas, because they were not armed.

          Last week a half-dozen masked Indian rebels stopped in for lunch at a storied cafeteria here called
          Sanborn's. They sat at the same counter where the fighters in broad sombreros supporting Emiliano
          Zapata, the revolutionary for whom the modern-day rebel organization is named, had a meal after
          marching to Mexico City in 1914.

          Masked Zapatista women, with babies strapped in shawls across their chests, turned up studying the
          bikinis on the beach in Acapulco.

          The most surprising encounter was a lunch on Thursday between three Zapatistas and several top
          business executives at the Industrialists' Club, the posh and exclusive meeting place for the captains
          of Mexican capitalism. Participants said the businessmen urged the Zapatistas to make peace with
          the government, while the Zapatistas urged the businessmen to urge the government to make peace
          with them.

          The government responded with its own press campaign. President Ernesto Zedillo traveled to Las
          Margaritas, a Chiapas Indian county that used to be strongly pro-Zapatista but is increasingly
          divided. He blamed the Zapatistas for holding up the peace talks.

          The Zapatistas also faced more criticism from other quarters than in years past. In Chiapas, a
          communique from a group of 79 evangelical Christian communities called for the Zapatistas "to
          surrender immediately." Pro-government Indians complained that Zapatistas were threatening to
          make them participate in the referendum.

          A national poll by the University of Guadalajara revealed Mexicans' complex views about the rebels.
          In the sample, 83 percent said they did not believe that Indians enjoy the same rights as other
          Mexicans. But 32 percent said they had a "bad" image of Marcos, while 29 percent said they had a
          "good" one.

          The peace talks collapsed in September 1996 after the government sought to change some terms it
          had previously accepted. The sides remain divided on a relatively few, but difficult, issues. The
          Zapatistas want to give more importance to collective property in Indian communities, while the
          government argues that the changes they propose would generate land battles all over Mexico.

          One question on the Zapatistas' yes-or-no ballot is: "Do you agree that we should reach a true peace
          through dialogue, demilitarizing the country by sending the soldiers back to their barracks as the
          Constitution and the laws require?"
 

                     Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company