Zapatistas start political tour of Mexico
The leader of the military group promises to advance its socialist, pro-Indian cause through peaceful means.
Twelve years after a short but violent New Year's uprising in Chiapas, Mexico's poorest state, the Zapatistas have launched a new campaign to reshape the nation - a political campaign.
The leader of the Mayan Zapatistas, Subcomandante Marcos,
launched a national tour Sunday to rally support for the group's pro-Indian, socialist policies, reports the
Associated Press.
Thousands of supporters cheered as Subcommandante Marcos, the Indian rights movement's ski-masked leader, roared through La Garrucha on a black motorcycle with a Mexican flag tied to the back and the initials of the Zapatista military army, EZLN, painted in red on the front.
The caravan's trip through all 31 states and Mexico City is meant to influence Mexico's July presidential election. Marcos has said Zapatista leaders will reach out to leftist groups across the country, creating a national movement that will "turn Mexico on its head."
The political tour, dubbed "The Other Campaign" in a reference to Mexico's 2006 presidential elections, is a marked departure from the Zapatistas' first appearance in 1994. On New Year's Day that year,
the EZLN emerged from the Chiapas jungle and attacked Mexican soldiers and police, in the hopes of fomenting a socialist movement to aid the state's poor indigenous population. The EZLN succeeded in capturing several towns, and by the time a cease-fire was reached in March, about 150 soldiers, rebels, and civilians had died.
Since then, the Zapatistas' operational focus has been political, not militant. In 2001, they campaigned across Mexico in support of an Indians' rights bill proposed by President Vicente Fox, then just recently elected. The Mexican Congress, however, approved a watered-down version of the bill, to the Zapatistas' dismay.
Most recently, the EZLN declared a "
red alert" in June 2005, recalling its commanders and warning outsiders to stay out of its territory, reported
The Christian Science Monitor.
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.
What happened, reports the
San Diego Independent Media Center, a grass-roots website, was the establishment of the "Sixth Declaration of the Lacondan Jungle" or the "Sexta," which has become
the platform of the current tour.
The text of the Sexta calls for a different approach in Mexican politics where different sectors of society will be united in movement for social change. Previously an indigenous peasant movement, the Zapatistas propose to bring together workers, rural and urban poor, people of oppressed sexual identities, teachers, students, other indigenous groups, small businesses, NGOs, cooperatives and collectives and independent individuals. The purpose of the national tour is to visit and listen.
However, The Other Campaign also appears to be predicated on faulting Mexico's current political and economic systems.
Reuters reports that Marcos said the Zapatistas
will not participate in Mexico's elections nor become an official political party, as he says the political system itself is corrupt.
In Palenque – where he arrived in a long convoy of Zapatistas, journalists and police and was greeted by about 6,000 supporters – the apparently unarmed Marcos blamed Mexican poverty on corrupt politicians and called for grass roots activism.
"This all has to change, and not from above where the right-wing is spreading its lies, but from below and from the left," he said.
Marcos expressed similar thoughts in San Cristobal, where
he told a crowd the Zapatistas "are not a government or a political party or, the worst thing in the world, a house of lawmakers," and promised that the movement would "turn Mexico on its head."
Despite the criticism, the Mexican government
welcomed the Zapatistas' political tour, the
BBC reported, and said that it "showed the group's determination to contribute to political debate within Mexico."
"It is an achievement of Mexican democracy and Mexican democracy guarantees the free expression of these ideas," Ruben Aguilar [a spokesman for President Vicente Fox] said.
"In that sense, it is recognised that the Zapatistas intend, through the political route, to make their points of views and ideas known."
While the direct effects of the Zapatista's nascent political campaign remain to be seen, it appears to have already spurred the Mexican government to
renew its focus on indigenous groups, reports
AP.
President Fox launched what appeared to be a competing mission Monday: a weeklong tour of Indian communities based in several states.
"There are issues pending about the use of natural resources. There are issues pending about land and territory," said Xochitl Galvez, head of the government's Commission for the Development of Indian Communities. He said those, as well as conflicts about the judicial standing of Indian communities, "will have to be dealt with."
The iconic Subcomandante Marcos, whom Mexican officials believe to be
a middle-class philosophy teacher according to the
BBC, has dropped his military title for the tour, instead adopting the title of "Delegado [delegate] Zero." His tour will travel
over the next six months from Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state, all the way north to the US border.
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