Zapatistas seek to galvanize Mexico’s leftists
SAN MIGUEL, Mexico After four years of hiding, the charismatic leader of the Zapatista rebel movement in southern Mexico has been holding “town hall” meetings with leftists, labor leaders, students, Indian-rights advocates and other supporters in an effort to forge a national campaign to rewrite Mexico’s Constitution along socialist lines.
The rebel, who calls himself Subcommander Marcos, emerged from the woods Sunday morning surrounded by 24 armed rebels for a second day of listening to the leaders of dozens of charities devoted to social work and human rights. All the rebels wore the movement’s trademark black balaclavas, including Marcos.
More than 280 small nongovernmental organizations, artists, punk rockers, students, rappers and social workers attended - a panoply of left-leaning folks on the fringe of Mexican politics who have rallied to the Zapatista banner. Many of the charities have been formed since 1994 just to aid the Zapatistas.
The attendees included an organization representing lesbian anarchists, a collective of witches, advocates fighting the privatization of waterworks, gay-rights promoters who call themselves polysexuals and well-respected human-rights monitors in Chiapas.
This was the fourth meeting of six that the rebel leaders have planned as part of what Marcos has dubbed “the other campaign,” a drive to galvanize the political left before the presidential elections in July 2006.
In speeches at the meetings and in open letters, Marcos has labeled mainstream politicians corrupt, suggesting that it matters little for the poor and indigenous people who wins the next election. Opening the meeting Saturday, he called for “a national leftist, anticapitalist program” and “a new constitution, which is another way of saying a new agreement for a new society.”
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Zapatistas start political tour of Mexico
The leader of the military group promises to advance its socialist, pro-Indian cause through peaceful means.
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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
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The Zapatistas, who were emerging from their jungle hideouts, said they would carry out the tour in a peaceful way by rejecting rifles or wars.
The rebels launched a brief uprising on the New Year's Day 12 years ago, calling for more rights for Mexico's Indian minority.
During a visit to Mexico's 31 states, Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos promised to
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Continuing a wave of protests against alleged electoral fraud, dozens of supporters of presidential hopeful Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador blocked entrances to the main offices of three foreign-owned banks in Mexico City, chanting Vote by vote! and Long Live Democracy!
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Leaving the motor bike on which he started his six-month tour, which will take him from the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas to the U.S. border, Marcos headed out of the mountain town of San Cristobal de Las Casas in a 10-vehicle convoy at the crack of dawn.
Dubbed "The Other Campaign" because it
Update 6: Zapatistas Begin Tour to Reshape Mexico
Zapatista rebels met Monday with leaders of poor and Indian groups at the start of a campaign that has carried them from their jungle strongholds for the first time in four years in a bid to reshape Mexico's politics.
The rebels' ski-masked spokesman, Subcomandante Marcos, arrived Monday in a caravan of minivans, SUVS and pickup trucks for the meetings with non-governmental organizations in this mountain city in southern Mexico.
The night before, Marcos formally launched the nationwide tour with a speech railing against capitalism, free trade and the Mexican government before 15,000 rebels
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Supporters of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador surrounded main offices in Mexico City of the U.S.-based Citigroups Mexican unit Banamex, Bancomer bank owned by Spains BBVA and the British giant HSBC. They closed them down for several hours, unfurling banners and chanting slogans.
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The Zapatista rebels of southern Mexico are finding it hard to pick a fight.
Mexico's leading left-leaning presidential contender, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, refused on Monday to answer weekend criticisms of his Democratic Revolution Party by Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos.
"I'm not going to fight with Subcomandante Marcos," Lopez Obrador told Mexican reporters during a campaign swing through northern Mexico.
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Mexican Economy Minister Sergio Garcia de Alba and Agriculture Minister Francisco Mayorga Castaneda will fly to Washington next week to discuss the issue with U.S. officials beyond the framework of the trade agreement, spokesman Ruben Aguilar said.
The visit is made after Canada and the United States turned down Mexico's request
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According to the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, it was the farmers at Concord who began the American Revolution with the famous "shot heard round the world."
But for the country just south of us, it was not a shot but a shout that began the Mexican War of Independence that freed it from its colonial oppressors.
As many revolutions often do, Mexico's began modestly enough. A group of mixed-race intellectuals established a social club and literary club in the town of Querétaro. During the meetings they discussed independence, but they were not republicans. What
