Subcomandante Marcos speaks again!

[Edelweiss]

EZLN Communique:The 13th Stele,Part I: A conch (http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/13thStelePt1.html)

EZLN Communique,The 13th Stele,Part II,A Death (http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/13thStelePt2.html)

EZLN Communique,The 13th Stele,Part III:A Name (http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/13thStelePt3.html)

EZLN Communique:The 13th Stele,Part IV:Plans (http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/13thStelePt4.html)

EZLN Communique,The 13th Stele,Part 5: Some History (http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/13thStelePt5.html)

EZLN/IRL, The 13th Stele, Part 6: A Good Government (http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/13thStelePt6.html)

EZLN Communique,The 13th Stele,Pt 7: Invitation (http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/13thStelePt7.html)

[guerrillaradio]

I saw these a while back...I love the way Marcos talks, it's so poetic and simultaneously profound:

"Instead of weaving their history with executions, death and destruction, they insist on living. And the vanguards of the world tear at their hair, because, as for 'victory or death,' these zapatistas neither vanquish nor die, but nor do they surrender, and they despise martyrdom as much as capitulation. Very otherly, it's true."

Beautiful. :)

Alan :ph34r:

[peaccenicked]

I agree with GR. It is inspirational.

[Valkyrie]

Mexico's Zapatista Rebels Changing Image
By JOHN RICE

OVENTIC, Mexico (AP) - The basketball announcer wore a ski mask. So did the guys playing the marimbas between games. The ice cream vendors and some of the players made do with bandanas that sometimes slipped below their mouths.

The relaxed atmosphere as Mexico's Zapatista rebels began a three-day public party Saturday was evidence of how far the movement has come since the tense, bloody days after it emerged in public by seizing several cities on Jan. 1, 1994.

Masked Zapatista commanders gathered shortly before midnight Friday to inaugurate new centers meant to smooth their dealings with outsiders. They call the locations ``caracoles,'' or ``snails,'' a Mayan symbol which represents, among other things, ``the opening to the heart,'' according to a recent communique from the movement's spokesman, Subcomandante Marcos.

By Saturday morning, thousands thronged the site of the inaugural festivities, cluttering it with tents, tarps and hammocks. The assembly of rebels, villagers and foreign supporters was as thick in places as the New York City subway at rush hour.


At the gathering, the Zapatistas adopted new ``Good Government Committees'' to help oversee a scattering of rebel-controlled townships in Chiapas state and to handle contacts outsiders, who have often been frustrated in past efforts to reach leaders of the clandestine organization.


The new centers will handle conflicts with neighboring Indian communities. The Zapatistas so far have been unable to win over most local Indians, who are often wary of the movement's style of collectivization, its military stance or its rejection of government aid.


``I think they are going to make it easier to resolve some conflicts with the neighbors and that is good for us,'' said Juan Gonzalez, the Chiapas state official in charge of resolving intercommunal disputes.


They also are evidence of a continuing shift toward political rather than military struggle for the Zapatista movement, whose adherents continue to use ski masks to hide their identity even though there have been no major military conflicts in more than nine years.


The poorly armed movement was beaten back into the jungle in 10 days before a cease-fire halted Mexico's army, but the Zapatista banner of Indian rights and opposition to free trade - combined with Marcos' witty communiques - won it international support.


``Whole years preparing to fire a weapon and it turns out that what we have to fire are words,'' Marcos wrote in one of a sudden spurt of communiques issued in July after a period of silence.


Those communiques outlined the new changes and invited supporters to a three-day bash in Oventic, a village about 10 miles north of San Cristobal de Las Casas.


Marcos had not appeared publicly at the gathering as of Saturday, although other rebel commanders were seen.


A string of trucks wound up the mountain roads carrying ski-masked Zapatistas past newly posted signs reading, ``You are in the territory of Zapatistas in rebellion.''


Foreign and Mexican supporters also made their way to the mountain slope clearing where they bunked down in a community hall or strung hammocks beneath plastic tarps to keep out the rain.


Vendors offered boiled corn-on-the-cob, watermelon, plums, tamales and soft drinks to the milling visitors, many of whom wore ski masks or bandanas.


Two Mexican federal administrations dealt with the Zapatistas by alternating military threats with appeals to negotiate.


A third, that of President Vicente Fox, who took office in December 2000, pulled the military back from positions near Zapatista towns and said that it ``is definitively canceling the option of violence'' in dealing with the rebels.


But the movement has cut off all negotiations with the government and has accused Fox of trying to sell much of the country to foreign investors with his ``Plan Puebla-Panama'' for highway, port and industrial development in impoverished southern Mexico.


Gonzalez said that community disputes have led some settlements to break away from the Zapatistas in recent years, reducing the movement's strength in the canyonlands where it began, though he said it appears to be growing stronger in the Mayan highland areas such as Oventic.

[Danton]

Entering the political arena....





http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3140313.stm

[mentalbunny]

I find the Zapatistas very interesting but I know so little about them, could anyone direct me somewhere with good info on them?

[Jesus Sanchez]

our word is our weapon: selected writtings: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos I found this book in my local library. It contains his comuiques and mexican folk tale as told by marcos, great read.