Frolic and Fear Conclude ’97

Town squares around the world were jammed with people on New Year’s Eve--and the one in the little mountain village of Polho in southern Mexico was no different.

But the 6,000 Tzotzil Indians crowded into the village square weren’t celebrating. They were taking refuge from gunmen who massacred 45 men, women and children last week in the nearby village of Acteal.

“We want to go home, but we don’t know if the murderers will come again. We don’t want to die,” villager Rafael Gomez Perez said.

A modest wish for the new year, which was marked in many other places around the world Wednesday with higher hopes, some solemnities and traditional silliness.

In Cairo, young men strolled along the Nile, tossing firecrackers behind groups of veiled women, provoking laughter and screams. Some youngsters wore golden hats.

But the main festival in Cairo, and the Arab world, was Ramadan, the dawn-to-dusk Muslim fast that began Tuesday. The Meridien Hotel in the Egyptian capital adorned its river facade with chains of lights in the shape of a Ramadan lantern.

Japan marked the dawn of the Year of the Tiger with 108 strokes at midnight from cast-iron temple bells, with each ring believed to dispel an evil of the past year.

Up to a million residents of Sydney, Australia, gathered at the city’s harbor--on the shores and in hundreds of boats--to see a $1.3-million fireworks display. Police reported 26 arrests but called it a quiet night in the city.

Pope John Paul II celebrated New Year’s Eve at the magnificent Jesuit church of St. Ignatius of Loyola in the heart of Rome.

In Britain, customs authorities agreed to release giant balloons of Hagar the Horrible, Betty Boop and other cartoon characters in time for them to join the London Parade on New Year’s Day.

The balloons, which appeared in the Thanksgiving Day parade in New York, were seized at Heathrow Airport because the necessary paperwork had not been completed.