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 Editorials | June 2005 
Masked Zapatista Leader Seeks Political Comeback in Mexico
 Angela Moscarella - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Mexico's indigenous Zapatista rebels haven't fought an armed battle in more than a decade, but now their elusive leader has surged back to national attention.
With a "red alert" to his supporters and communiques that hinted at a possible return to arms, then withdrew the threat, the guerrilla leader known as Subcomandante Marcos has succeeded at least at one thing: public relations.
With presidential elections due next year, some analysts say Marcos is seeking a political comeback.
The Zapatista National Liberation Front (EZLN) skirmished with Mexicon forces for just two weeks in early 1994. Since then, the group has focused on pressing the government through the media to improve the lot of indigenous people in its southeastern home state of Chiapas and the rest of Mexico.
After the rebels dismissed a 2001 law meant to address indigenous grievances, Marcos and his followers retreated to their villages in Chiapas and set up a kind of local autonomy.
Little has been heard since from Marcos, a master of self- promotion ever since the ski-masked rebel leader received reporters in a southeastern town on New Year's Day in 1994.
Two months ago, Marcos resurfaced when he sent a letter to Italy's Inter Milan football team, asking for a match. Inter accepted, though no date has been set.
Marcos raised the stakes this week when he sent media a statement announcing a "red alert". His followers emptied their villages and disappeared into the hills. Marcos said the alert was to prepare "a new step in the struggle".
The "alert" came as the Mexican army destroyed marijuana crops in the region. After some confusion, the government insisted the fields were not in the Zapatista-controlled region.
The conservative administration of President Vicente Fox downplayed the announcement, insisting absolute normality reigned in Chiapas.
Still, the alert caused unease in political circles and some observers wondered whether the Mayan Indian rebels were about to launch another military attack.
Under a 1996 law, the Zapatistas kept their arms and are protected from arrest by security forces.
But three days later, Marcos issued another statement. "We are not ... planning nor carrying out consultations about a renewal of offensive military combat," he said.
The reason for the "red alert", he said, was because the Zapatistas were "asking our hearts to see whether we are going to do and say other things". Now, Mexicans are wondering what Marcos meant.
Political analyst Carlos Fazio sees Marcos' statements as "a move to reposition himself politically and in the media" ahead of next year's presidential election.
Marcos wants to launch a radical leftist organization, Fazio said, that would be an alternative to the opposition centre-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which the Zapatista leader has harshly criticized as being lukewarm.
Marcos this week also lambasted popular Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the frontrunner in the presidential race and likely PRD candidate. He called Lopez Obrador a "serpent's egg" and said he was not a leftist at all.
The big question, Fazio said, is whether the Zapatistas plan to lay down their arms and give up their status as a "clandestine and military" group.
The answer might be in the next communique signed by "Subcomandante Marcos". |
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