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MEXICO: Zapatista Leader Reaches Out to Neglected Minorities

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, May 3 2006 (IPS) - “They torture and kill us because we are different. But we are going to put an end to that from below, where the best people are found,” Zapatista guerrilla leader ‘Subcomandante’ Marcos said in the Mexican capital Wednesday, addressing a crowd made up of transvestites, homosexuals, prostitutes and indigenous people, who cheered him on.

Sporting his trademark black ski mask and military-style outfit, Marcos said his six-month tour of Mexico, which began in January, is the seed of “a great movement that will rise up to put an end to the hypocrisy” of the political parties, the government and “the powerful.”

The spokesman for the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), an indigenous group that rose up in arms in January 1994 in the impoverished southern Mexican state of Chiapas, is leading what the rebel group calls “the other campaign,” by contrast to the ongoing campaign for the Jul. 2 presidential elections.

The aim of Marcos’ tour is to bring together “the true left” and marginalised sectors of society in a front seeking to bring about “change from below” through peaceful social struggle.

The barely-armed insurgent group scorns traditional electoral politics and all of the country’s parties, including the leftwing Party for the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

“We have learned to respect the struggle of sex workers,” Marcos said Wednesday, the last day of a six-day visit to the capital, where he also met with organisations of students, campesinos (peasants) and slumdwellers.

He said prostitutes and others who are exploited and “looked down upon” form part of “the other campaign” and are the seed of structural changes that he believes must be brought about on the political, economic and cultural fronts in Mexico.

Marcos urged his listeners not to put up with mistreatment “from above,” and to fight for their rights.

Emiliano Zapata, one of the leaders of the early 20th century Mexican revolution, “Lives, and the struggle continues on and on!”, “Long live ‘the other campaign’!”, and “EEEZZZLLLNNN” were the chants heard during the rally, which was addressed by representatives of organisations of transvestites, sex workers, gays and lesbians.

With his ever-present pipe hanging from his lips, and flanked by two prostitutes, Marcos listened attentively to each speech, while journalists, tourists and Zapatista followers elbowed each other aside to snap photos of the charismatic Zapatista leader.

“The struggle to be different is the struggle for life,” said Marcos. From a distance, a handful of police officers kept watch over the rally, where security was in the hands of a group of young people wearing black t-shirts and red scarves around their necks.

The meeting with the representatives of sexual minorities, held in Alameda Park in the capital, was attended by around 200 people. The crowds have been of a similar size in most of the meetings and rallies held by the EZLN in towns and cities around the country in the last four months.

The small number of participants and the scant media coverage that the Zapatista nationwide tour has received contrast sharply with the massive crowds that the group drew in the past and the position it once enjoyed in the international limelight.

“It doesn’t matter that it looks like there are few of us, because there are actually a lot of usàMarcos isn’t alone, and the Zapatistas aren’t alone,” Diego Martínez, a university student taking part in the rally, told IPS.

Juana García, a young indigenous woman who stood with a baby in her arms during the more than two hours of speeches, told IPS that Marcos – the EZLN’s only mestizo (mixed-race) leader – “is a good guy, and looks out for those of us who are poor.” (The rest of the Zapatista leaders are indigenous).

But in other circles that in the past respected Marcos and saw him as a vital component of the Mexican political scene with an important role to play, he has lost backing. Supporters of the PRD and of the party’s presidential candidate, former Mexico City mayor Andrés López Obrador, criticise him harshly.

For his part, Marcos, who is touring the country unarmed and on foot or horseback or by car or motorcycle, has described the PRD as “the left hand of the right,” and says the party’s political leaders are “shameless scoundrels” and that López Obrador is “ambitious and sinister” as well as “neoliberal.”

Writer Guadalupe Loaeza, who backs the PRD candidate and who saw Marcos in 2001 as a brave, idealistic and youthful leader, now says he is “old and paunchy” and that “he can’t stand fading out of the spotlight, he needs a leading role, and he needs people to talk about him.”

In 1995, Mexico’s intelligence services said Subcomandante Marcos was really Rafael Guillén, a former university professor with a degree in philosophy who would be turning 49 on Jun. 19. However, Marcos has consistently denied that he is Guillén.

Most of the members of the EZLN are holed up in the remote hilly jungles of Chiapas. The group has not fired a single shot since the second week of 1994, when the government of then president Carlos Salinas (1988-1994) was pressured by public opinion to stop cracking down on the rebels and adopt a ceasefire.

The Zapatistas broke off peace talks with the government of Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) in 1996.

Up to 2001, the EZLN continued to organise high-profile political initiatives, such as international conferences in the jungles of Chiapas attended by renowned personalities like U.S. filmmaker Oliver Stone and former French first lady Danielle Mitterand.

The activities organised by the group, which had allies all over the world, called for in-depth democratic reforms in Mexico that would include the recognition of the rights and culture of indigenous peoples and their right to autonomous control over their territories.

But as Congress and the government gradually began to respond to the demands of the country’s indigenous people – who account for approximately 10 percent of the population of 106 million – the previously strong support enjoyed by the Zapatistas became less enthusiastic, and the group began to fade into the background.

When for the first time in 71 years Mexico began to be governed in 2000 by a president from a party other than the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) – conservative President Vicente Fox – steps were taken towards the official recognition of indigenous rights and some of the EZLN’s demands were met.

But little has changed in Chiapas, which continues to be one of the poorest, most neglected areas of Mexico, despite its enormous wealth in natural resources.

Marcos went on an earlier tour in 2001, when he and other EZLN leaders visited the capital amid great fanfare, to directly ask the legislature to approve several constitutional reforms.

However, despite the changes promised by Fox and the political parties, the new legislation ended up leaving out key aspects of the only agreement that had been reached in the peace talks between the Zapatistas and the Zedillo administration, involving the self-determination of indigenous communities and the collective use of the natural resources in their territories.

Although he no longer draws huge crowds, Marcos says that “the other campaign” will lead to a true revolution in the next few years.