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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | August 2005 
PRD: Remarks 'Excessive'
 El Universal/AP/EFE
| | Zapatista rebel leader subcomandante Marcos performs his trademark left-handed salute at an event in Mexico City. |
The leadership of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) on Sunday called Zapatista rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos' weekend attacks on the party and its likely presidential candidate "excessive."
"We emphatically reject the notion that the PRD and its probable candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, are going to 'screw' the Zapatistas, popular movements or the people of Mexico," said a communiqué from the party, making reference to a phrase Marcos had employed on Saturday. "The tone used by Marcos seems to us to have been excessive."
The Zapatista movement is based largely on demands for Indian rights, and López Obrador, himself a former Indian rights activist, is the leading presidential candidate in public opinion polls.
But on Saturday, Marcos called talk of a Zapatista relationship with the former Mexico City mayor "destined to failure" and said "those who are with López Obrador can't be with us."
He also said López Obrador and the PRD were "going to screw all of us."
The PRD statement issued Sunday said that "our support of the the indigenous movement that the Zapatistas represent is clear," and added that the party "has decided to seek power through peaceful means through the electoral process a road that has not been shared by the Zapatistas."
Carrying the movement's new mascot, a chicken known as "Penguín," the ski-mask-clad Marcos appeared at a rally in the village of San Rafael, Chiapas, on Saturday to discuss a wide-ranging political platform with representatives of non-governmental, peasant and labor organizations.
It was the rebel leader's first public appearance in five years.
In a 90-minute speech, Marcos warned López Obrador and his PRD party, that the Zapatistas would work against him in every way.
It was the second time in recent months that he had harsh words for the former capital mayor.
The guerrilla leader fired his first salvo at López Obrador in June, saying in a statement that the candidate's pledge of "macroeconomic stability" would translate into "growing profits for the rich; poverty and scraps for the dispossessed."
López Obrador did not respond at the time, but a month later, while unveiling his 50point presidential campaign platform, he promised to fulfill the San Andrés Larráinzar accords an agreement negotiated in 1996 between the government and the Zapatistas that was never fully signed into law.
Last month, the Zapatistas declared a "red alert," recalling its top commanders to hold highlevel discussions and announcing days later a move toward politics and away from armed conflict.
On Saturday, Marcos announced seven weeks of upcoming conversations with liberal social movements, Indian organizations and nongovernment organizations from Mexico and abroad.
The new phase of Zapatista action "is not to draw lines, is not to promote the armed fight in another state," Marcos said. "It is to go and ask the people what they think and how their problems are being resolved." |
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