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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | March 2006 
Marcos Denied Entry to Prison Due to His Mask
 Wire services/El Universal
| | The leader of the Zapatista organization was denied permission to visit two inmates in a prison because he refused to remove the ski mask that has become something of his trademark and identify himself with his real name. |
The leader of the Zapatista organization was denied permission to visit two inmates in a prison because he refused to remove the ski mask that has become something of his trademark and identify himself with his real name.
"Based on the statutes and regulations, we asked Marcos to identify himself and remove his ski mask, but he would not agree and left," an official at the Puentecillas Penitentiary in the central state of Guanajuato told EFE.
The leader of the group, which staged a rebellion in 1994 but has become over the years a leftist movement defending indigenous rights and grassroots administration of villages in the southern state of Chiapas, was known as Subcomandante Marcos but now calls himself Delegado Zero.
He is widely reported to be Rafael Guillén, a non-indigenous former university professor.
When challenged in public on other occasions to remove his trademark ski mask and show his face, the self-styled subcomandante has justified wearing the mask as part of the "singular" nature of the Zapatista struggle, which was a military one only in the first days of 1994.
"Marcos did not say anything and just left with the people who were accompanying him, and he held a meeting outside with a bullhorn he had with him," the prison official said.
Marcos traveled to the penitentiary to meet with two inmates facing charges in a land dispute.
He said during the meeting that the denial of permission for him to visit the penitentiary could have come from Interior Secretary Carlos Abascal, since he had been allowed into three other prisons during his ongoing tour of Mexico without showing his face.
The guerrilla leader announced plans in January to form a grassroots political movement that would provide an alternative to the political parties taking part in the July general elections.
Marcos is leading a Zapatista caravan that aims to travel through each of Mexico´s 31 states and the Federal District by the time it concludes on June 25. |
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