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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | July 2005 
Mexico's Marcos Emerges as Critic Before Presidential Contest
 Bloomberg
| | Subcomandante Marcos |
Subcomandante Marcos, the ski-masked leader of Mexico's Zapatista rebel movement, has reappeared after four years in the jungle of Chiapas, seeking to influence the outcome of the 2006 presidential election.
In nine statements posted on the Internet in the past month, Marcos accused the nation's three biggest political parties of failing to help the poor, allowing the drug trade to flourish and bowing to pressure from the U.S.
The comments by Marcos, the leader of a 1994 uprising, may cost presidential frontrunner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, currently the mayor of Mexico City, votes in next year's election, said Jeffrey Davidow, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico.
"If Marcos really goes into mass protests and meetings, he will gain a tremendous amount of press interest," said Davidow, president of the University of California's Institute of the Americas in San Diego who served as ambassador between 1998 and 2002. "That might help Lopez Obrador in one way but it might also cost him some support."
In one communique, Marcos said Lopez Obrador is deceiving his working class supporters with an economic plan that would benefit the rich. In a six-page commentary, Marcos said Lopez Obrador's platform offers "growing wealth for the rich, growing misery and losses for the dispossessed."
Marcos also urged workers, small business executives and minority groups to join a campaign for a "leftist agenda" and a new constitution that would fight for rights for the nation's most disenfranchised, including Indians.
`Growing Wealth'
Lopez Obrador, of the opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution, gained support among the poor for providing stipends for the elderly and spending more on Mexico City infrastructure. More recently, he has sought to court the nation's business elite by promising to maintain macroeconomic stability.
"That's the tightrope that Lopez Obrador has to walk: He has to somehow preserve his base but not freak out the rest of Mexico," said Juan Lindau, chairman of the political science department at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and author of three books on the country.
Lopez Obrador, 51, led a May presidential poll with 42.5 percent of respondents saying they will vote for him, up from 37 percent in February. Mexico City-based pollster Consulta Mitofski surveyed 1,200 people nationwide between May 15 and May 23. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Calm
Marcos said the National Action Party of President Vicente Fox, a former executive of Atlanta-based Coca Cola Co., serves U.S. interests. The Institutional Revolutionary Party, which led the country for 71 years before the 2000 election, is complicit in drug trafficking and other crimes, Marcos said.
Lopez Obrador said he wouldn't respond to Marcos's criticism.
"Everyone has the right to express themselves," Lopez Obrador said during a June 20 press conference. "There is no reason to be bothered or upset. One always has to be calm and that's it."
Marcos's latest appearance, which began with an unexplained "red alert" at the five communes controlled by the Zapatistas in Chiapas on June 19, is an attempt to rekindle a dying movement, said analysts such as Jose Antonio Crespo from the Center for Economic Research and Teaching in Mexico City.
The "red alert" ensured coverage of Marcos's subsequent statement, in which he explained the Zapatistas' plan. La Jornada, a Mexican daily known for its coverage of labor and culture, published the complete texts of Marcos's four last communiques under a section entitled "Zapatista Army of National Liberation/New Phase."
1994 Uprising
Zapatista experts including Fox's chief negotiator with the rebels, Luis H. Alvarez, said they weren't alarmed by the comments by Marcos. Alvarez met with Marcos several times as the president of a congressional committee for peace before 2000.
Javier Elorriaga, a spokesman for the Zapatistas in Mexico City, didn't return phone calls and e-mail messages by Bloomberg seeking comment.
Since their uprising on the first day of 1994, the Zapatista movement has won the sympathy of groups such as Oxfam International and celebrities like Inter Milan soccer team owner Massimo Moratti. They drew the world's attention to their demands by seizing control of seven towns in Chiapas. President Carlos Salinas and Marcos agreed to a cease fire on Jan. 12.
The movement takes its name from Emiliano Zapata, the sombrero-wearing hero of the Mexican revolution who fought to return land held by the wealthy to indigenous farmers in the early 1900s.
Web Audience
Marcos has reached a global audience through the Internet. Google Inc., the most-used Web search engine, displays more than 230,000 hits for Marcos, ranging from his official site to university pages dedicated to the Zapatistas. Amazon.com lists more than 2,400 books and major articles on the rebel group.
Crespo said Marcos's media savvy and the guilt many Mexicans feel about neglecting the indigenous guarantee coverage of the Zapatistas and protect the movement from government crackdowns.
Under a law passed in 1995, the Zapatistas must stay confined to their communes in Chiapas, or face jail. Still, the government probably wouldn't stop members leaving their communes to travel to political meetings, said Crespo.
"They're betting that the government won't dare try to arrest them because the political cost would be too high," said Crespo. |
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