Zapatistas embark on six-month tour

After playing a high-profile role in global indigenous and social movements in the 1990s, Mexico's Zapatista guerrillas gradually faded out of the limelight. But a nationwide tour starting on New Year's Day is likely to change that. On Jan. 1, the leaders of the indigenous Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) planned to leave their enclave in the jungles of the southern state of Chiapas to begin a six-month tour through Mexico–a strategy that coincides with the campaign for the July 2006 presidential elections. The aims of the barely armed guerrilla organization, which scorns all political parties and says it is not interested in taking part in the elections, are to seek allies among the "genuine" left, put the indigenous cause on the campaign agenda and design an alternative political proposal opposed to free-market "neoliberal" policies in assemblies with grassroots and civil society groups. The EZLN will also organize, on an unspecified date, a global meeting "against neoliberalism" similar to the Intercontinental Gathering for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism held in 1996 in Chiapas. That meeting, attended by prominent international figures like US filmmaker Oliver Stone and human rights activist and former French first lady Danielle Mitterand, was considered one of the events that gave birth to the movement that is opposed to globalization in its current form and asserts that "another world is possible." The new step the rebel group is taking will define its future. "The challenge is to either once again take on a protagonistic role, or to gradually leave the scene," said Lucio Contreras, a political scientist at the Autonomous National University of Mexico. The EZLN, which rose up in arms on Jan. 1, 1994 in the impoverished state of Chiapas, demanding justice and respect for the rights of indigenous people, has not fired a single shot since the second week of 1994, when the government of then president Carlos Salinas (1988-1994) declared a unilateral ceasefire and engaged in peace talks, which stalled in 1996. Over the years, the group organized peaceful political events, and won support and allies around the world. When conservative President Vicente Fox took office in 2000 as the first president from a party other than the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in seven decades, the new government took steps towards the recognition of indigenous rights and met certain demands set forth by the EZLN as a condition for returning to the negotiating table. However, the legislative reform passed by Congress left out key aspects relating to self-determination of indigenous communities and the collective use of natural resources, as demanded by the Zapatistas and agreed in the only accord reached in the peace talks before they broke off. In consequence, the EZLN refused to reengage in negotiations. Mexico's indigenous people, who number around 10 million out of a total population of nearly 107 million, remain steeped in poverty, especially in Chiapas, the country's poorest state. After years of receiving heavy coverage in the press at home and abroad, the EZLN gradually stopped putting out statements and pulled into its shell, refraining from participating in anti-globalization initiatives like the World Social Forum that has been held every year–usually in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre–since 2001. Nonetheless, the EZLN remains "a strong international reference point in the fight against neoliberalism, and will be recorded as such in history," said Enrique Vivanco, a member of a Mexican university group that supports the Zapatistas. Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales, who will be that country's first indigenous president, invited EZLN leader Subcomandante Marcos to attend his Jan. 22 inaugural ceremony. Both Morales and Marcos are opposed to free-market economic policies and have defended the rights of indigenous people. "We have reached a point where we cannot go any further, and, in addition, it is possible that we could lose everything we have if we remain as we are and do nothing more in order to move forward. The hour has come to take a risk once again and to take a step which is dangerous but which is worthwhile," the EZLN stated in a communiqué issued in June, when it announced its plan for the nationwide tour. Under the theme "The Other Campaign," the EZLN delegates, led by Marcos, will visit all of Mexico's 32 states, where they will hold "assemblies" with their supporters and groups that share similar aims. As in a 2001 trip to Mexico City, the masked guerrillas will travel without weapons and with authorization from the government and approval from the country's political parties, which see the tour as a well-intentioned peaceful strategy. Former assistant bishop of Chiapas Raáºl Vera said the tour to be undertaken by the Zapatistas is "a symbol of the search for justice and peace in the midst of the extravagance of the election campaign." The EZLN initiative, aimed at rallying grassroots support, stands out because it emerges from "the indigenous world, from among the victims of government deception and of the deaf ear turned by the authorities to their requests and demands," said Vera. EZLN spokespersons announced that after the six-month tour that begins in January, they will carry out another one from September 2006 to March 2007, but accompanied by the groups that join up with them in the first tour. "In April 2007, the national and regional delegations will be replaced by a new team. And we will thus continue forward, until we finish–if we finish "" drawing up an alternative blueprint for the country, Marcos said in a November statement. The Zapatistas, who control a small jungle zone that is inhabited by poor, indigenous people and is surrounded by army troops, will carry out their tour at a time at which the political climate is marked by the tense dispute over who will succeed President Fox. According to the EZLN, all of those involved in the campaign are "rascals" and "crooks," and civil society groups with no party connections and leftist organizations that are not taking part in the elections are the only "true" leftist option. In its criticism of politicians, the EZLN includes former Mexico City mayor Andrés López Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party, the front-runner in the polls. According to Marcos, López Obrador's campaign platform is not leftist but centrist, and "the center is nothing but the moderate right."