It will all be made clear in the next Zapatista memo

Clouds roll in from the mountains, low and heavy, and cover the rebel stronghold. Two young men, their black ski masks tossed carelessly beside them, sit at the Collective Cafe of the Resistance sipping grapefruit soda and chatting softly in the indigenous Tzotzil language.

In a shack between the church, the clinic, and the Collective Music Store (where a summer sale of "revolutionary CDs" is under way) a three-person welcoming committee, faces covered, offers a glimpse into the secretive and confused state of Mexico's Zapatista movement today.

Eleven years after the rebels first emerged from the jungle to oppose the North American Free Trade Agreement with an armed revolt - seizing several towns in southeast Mexico and inspiring an international cult following among the antiglobalization set - they are trying to stage a comeback. But as what?

Subcomandante Marcos, the elusive Zapatista leader - a white academic whose real name, Mexican officials say, is Rafael Sebastian Guillen Vicente - is putting out one contradictory communiqué after another, scattering mysterious clues as to what he and his followers are plotting.

Think of it as a rebel movement having a midlife crisis.

"Everything will be made clear in the next communiqué," says one welcoming-committee rebel in jeans and a bandanna.

The rebel beside him, with long braids hanging from the back of her ski mask, puts her head down on the wobbly wood table and takes a nap.

"We don't know more," says the third in the group, speaking languidly. "What we know, we don't say," corrects the first. "There is a new direction, yes," the third posits, changing his gambit. "There might be a communiqué about this," the first sums up. As they walk outside, they peel off their masks.

It's all a far cry from the heroic beginnings in 1994, when the mostly Mayan Zapatistas emerged on New Year's Day, fighting against capitalism on the first day that NAFTA came into effect. They were confronted by government troops and an estimated 145 rebels, soldiers, and civilians were killed, before a cease-fire was signed. But the truce was an uneasy one, with the Zapatistas remaining armed and the government stationing some 100 camps around the rebel territory.

During the ensuing years, the Zapatistas were credited with putting native rights on the national political agenda and embarrassing the government into improving infrastructure, healthcare, and education in the region. But Chiapas, and the villages under their control, continued to languish in the same abject poverty Marcos had pledged to fight. The movement faded from the stage.

Then, suddenly, on June 19, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) declared a "red alert" - recalling its top commanders to hold high-level discussions in the jungle; shutting down the five strongholds they have established in Chiapas, including Oventic; calling on Zapatista troops and sympathizers to go into hiding; and warning outsiders to stay in rebel territory "at their own risk." Major newspapers in Mexico City speculated that the Zapatistas were preparing a new armed offensive, coinciding with the unofficial start of the race for the 2006 presidential elections.

After four weeks of silence, Marcos sent word from his jungle hideout to end the red alert. The announcements that followed, however, did little to shed light on what was going on.

In one statement the rebel leader announced a move toward politics and away from armed conflict. In the next communiqué, Marcos boasted that the Zapatistas had completed a military reorganization begun in 2002 and that "we have the capacity to survive ... any attack or enemy action that tries to stop our leadership or totally annihilate us."

Later, in a rambling missive on the Internet, Marcos called for a peaceful nationwide leftist civil movement and said the rebels would send a delegation across the country to unite leftist workers, advocates, and students, and push for a new constitution to "defend the weak."

Finally, the latest communiqué, released last week, announced that the rebels had designated a new mascot: a chicken named "Penguin." "Penguin has become part of the General Command of the Zapatista army," wrote Marcos. "We are all like Penguin, forcing ourselves to rise up and make our way in Mexico, in Latin America and the world."

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