Mexican Rebel Leader Meets With Indians

ap ^ | 1.2.05 | IOAN GRILLO

[Flavius]

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico - The Zapatista movement's ski-masked leader began his public meetings on Monday in a six-month national tour to form a new leftist movement, pledging to "listen to everybody" as he met with Indian groups and rights activists. ADVERTISEMENT

Apparently competing for the attention of Mexico's 13 million Indians, President Vicente Fox on Monday began his own tour of the country's indigenous communities.

The Zapatista leader, Subcomandante Marcos, arrived at the University of the Earth, a school for Indians in a dirt-road slum on the outskirts of San Cristobal.

Accompanied by a dozen masked companions, he met with non-governmental groups and neighborhood leaders representing poor Indians, including thousands of evangelical Protestants who were forced from their homes in the heavily Roman Catholic town of San Juan Chamula.

"We will listen to everybody," he told a crowd of more than 300 people. "We are not a government or a political party or, the worst thing in the world, a house of lawmakers."

Marcos on Sunday launched a tour of the country's 31 states, promising to form a new national leftist movement that will "turn Mexico on its head" — a mission he timed to coincide with the 2006 presidential campaign.

He is making the trip on a black motorcycle, drawing comparisons to the socially oriented journey of the Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara in the 1950s.

Community leaders who met with Marcos on Monday said they hoped his campaign would help change the plight of poor Indians everywhere, including here in the impoverished, southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas.

"We are forgotten people left with nothing," said Domingo Lopez, a white-bearded community leader from the San Cristobal slum of La Hormiga.

Juan Banuelos, a poet and former Zapatista adviser, said the Zapatista movement is part of a wider struggle of the 60 million Indians in Latin America.

"The election of Evo Morales in Bolivia and the Zapatista movement are part of an uprising of indigenous people that will change the continent," he said.

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."

Fox closed some military bases near Zapatista territory and freed jailed rebel sympathizers shortly after starting his six-year term in December 2000, but peace efforts stalled when Congress watered down a Zapatista-backed constitutional amendment for Indian rights in 2001.

The latest Zapatista campaign has brought the rebels out of their jungle strongholds for the first time in four years.

Among those who welcomed Marcos to the Indian university Monday was Violeta Paguy, representing a Guatemalan community in Chiapas.

"Believe me, there are many people in Central America who support you," she said, breaking down into tears as the crowd applauded. "It is an honor to be here."

[Army Air Corps]

"The Zapatista leader, Subcomandante Marcos, arrived at the University of the Earth, a school for Indians in a dirt-road slum on the outskirts of San Cristobal."

I can only imagine what sort of goofy course offerings are available at the University of the Earth.

[keithtoo]

Apparently irony is lost both on the reporter and Sub-community-Zero. Mexico already has about 4000 Leftist movements.

That's about 4000 too many.