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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | July 2005 
Mexico Braces for Next Move by Elusive Leader of Zapatista Rebels
 James C. Mckinley Jr. - NYTimes
| | In Mexico City and in Chiapas, many people wonder why Subcommander Marcos has declared a "red alert" in Zapatista-run centers like Oventic. {Photo: Adriana Zehbrauskas/NYTimes) |
Oventic, Mexico - The sign on the road outside this Zapatista town says "Closed for Red Alert," and the normally bustling cluster of shops, schools, a shoe factory and a health clinic is quiet. The masked rebels who usually oversee Oventic have been called to a meeting in the jungles of southern Mexico.
After years of relative calm, the uneasy peace between the government and the Zapatistas has been shaken in recent days as the rebel leaders have put their forces on high alert, shut down the five governing centers they established in Chiapas in 2003 and issued a flurry of communiqués calling for a nationwide leftist political movement.
Here in the southern state of Chiapas, and in Mexico City, the question is: what is Subcommander Marcos up to?
Fears that the rebels might be planning an offensive or bracing for a government attack evaporated after Marcos, their elusive leader, declared from his jungle hideout last week that the Zapatistas had no intention of renewing fighting, which officially ended in 1995.
Since then, however, Marcos has issued several rambling missives over the Internet. The last, on Thursday, said the rebels would try to rally support for a leftist agenda before the 2006 presidential race by sending a delegation of Zapatistas across the country to unite leftist workers, advocates and students.
The delegation's mission would be to rewrite the Constitution and "to construct from below an alternative to neo-liberal destruction and a leftist alternative for Mexico," wrote Marcos, a white academic whose real name, officials say, is Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, and who rocketed to fame as the masked, armed foe of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990's.
The statement was peppered with anticapitalist language and accused Mexico's politicians of trampling the interests of workers and farmers in the name of free markets. "What is happening in Mexico is that it has become a place where people are born, and die, only to work for the enrichment of foreigners, principally rich gringos," he said.
Marcos's last communiqué ended speculation that he might be trying to enter mainstream politics as a candidate for office or transform his band of rebels into a political party, a widespread theory in recent days.
But it left unanswered what sort of role he is seeking to play in the three-way presidential contest next year.
The most likely candidates are the former interior minister from President Vicente Fox's center-right party, the leftist mayor of Mexico City and the national leader of the centrist authoritarian party that governed Mexico for seven decades.
Marcos has harshly criticized the Mexico City mayor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who leads in most polls. The comments erased any notion that the former Marxist professor would support Mr. López Obrador just because he was the most liberal of the candidates.
Marcos has proved a master manipulator of public opinion since he led the Zapatistas, a ragtag army of Mayan descent, out of the jungle on New Year's Day 1994 in a revolt against capitalism and free trade.
A year later, the Mexican military pushed the insurgency back into a mountainous nature reserve near Guatemala and set up more than 100 camps in rebel territory. There has been little fighting since, save for attacks by paramilitary groups on villages that support the Zapatistas.
In 2001, the Zapatistas marched across the country to the capital to seek passage of an Indian rights bill. But when Congress passed a gutted version of the bill, the rebels retreated into the jungle and set up autonomous governments in dozens of towns.
They have since established five regional government centers like the one at Oventic, each governed by juntas made up of representatives from rebel-run municipalities. The centers offer health clinics and schools, as well as outlets for Indian-made goods, from shoes to shawls.
The Fox administration's strategy has been to pour money into projects in towns where the Zapatistas are not in control.
These days, the former rebel-held territory of 1994 is an odd patchwork. The Fox government controls towns right next to municipalities run by rebels, and animosities between government-supported towns and rebel-held towns run high.
Although international aid groups continue to pump relief dollars into the Zapatista region, the rebels' peaceful attempts to set up their own utopian communities have taken them out of the national limelight.
Marcos and other rebel leaders recaptured the country's attention on June 19, when they declared a "red alert" and then retreated into the jungles for a six-day conference on what their next move would be.
Carlos Montemayor, a writer in Mexico City who sympathizes with the rebels, noted it was not the first time Subcommander Marcos had manipulated a situation masterfully to promote his brand of Marxist ideology, without firing a shot.
"This is nothing extraordinary," Mr. Montemayor said. "In the 11 years since the revolt, the Zapatistas have demonstrated a capacity to take political action. I think what is coming is a demonstration that they still have the capacity to take political action." |
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