The Zapatistas' mystery agenda

i remember walking around the zocalo in mexico city not long after the zapatista national liberation army (EZLN) emerged seemingly out of nowhere on the last day of 1993 by seizing a number of villages and highways in the southeastern mexican state of chiapas...

the zocalo is always ground zero for national protests in mexico and there were a number of them in progress that day... i happened to notice several well-groomed men and women in business attire walking around with clipboards and became curious... i tagged along with one for a while until i managed to figure out that they were employees of a p.r. firm hired by the zapatistas to gauge public opinion of their actions... amazing, i remember thinking, how times change... now the revolution hires its own p.r. firm... that was followed by the realization that one of the reasons the mexican government wasn't rolling a mass of heavily armed troops into chiapas to dispatch the cheeky bastards as they would have done in previous years without batting an eyelash, was that subcomandante marcos, the anonymous, balaclava-wearing ezln leader was sitting in the lacandon rain forest in chiapas, drinking coffee with cnn reporters who were beaming it all back to the rest of world, live via satellite... not your father's oldsmobile...

The Zapatista guerrillas in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas have pledged that they will not take up their weapons again.

But they have also announced their determination to ensure that the ”scoundrels” - a catch-all term to describe all politicians - ”will not get their own way,” but rather will ”be held accountable” and forced to pay.

What will the next step be for this poorly-armed indigenous rebel movement, which has captured the world's attention with daring political actions throughout its 11-year history, but has maintained a markedly low profile over the last four?

[...]

Through a spokesperson, the leader of the EZLN, known as ”Subcomandante Marcos”, revealed that the group is planning to do ”something else” to put forward its demands, but has still not specifically stated what it means to do or when.

”This other thing does not imply any kind of military offensive on our part. We are not planning or discussing the resumption of combat,” Marcos noted in one of several communiqués released this past week.

somewhat suprising, at least to me, is that the zapatistas are strongly opposed to the presidential candidacy of andrés manuel lópez obrador (or amlo as he's come to be known), the left-leaning mayor of mexico city who has been leading the polls for the last six months...

According to Marcos, the political and macroeconomic stability that López Obrador has pledged to establish if he is elected president will merely mean ”growing profits for the rich, poverty and growing plunder for the dispossessed, and an order that keeps the discontent of the latter under control.”

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