Subcomandante Marcos is dead (not literally)

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4872-farewell-subcomandante

Subcomandante Marcos as a hologram/persona no longer exists in an effort to prevent the EZLN and the ideology of Zapatismo from being Marcos, and to prevent Marcos from being them.

Seems like a good tactic to cut out the unintentional cult of personality that formed. It also reflects the changing strategy of the EZLN.

Note: THE MAN BEHIND MARCOS IS NOT DEAD, HE HAS CHANGED HIS IDENTITY.

[mindsword]

why would you shun your own martyr and the only guy giving you any kind of PR and holding the organizations face together? its like if cuba should suddenly go "che gevara was a douche we have no connection to him". way to backstab a dead guy.

[Leftsolidarity]

why would you shun your own martyr and the only guy giving you any kind of PR and holding the organizations face together? its like if cuba should suddenly go "che gevara was a douche we have no connection to him". way to backstab a dead guy.

Huh? What do you think happened because I think you misunderstand.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

why would you shun your own martyr and the only guy giving you any kind of PR and holding the organizations face together? its like if cuba should suddenly go "che gevara was a douche we have no connection to him". way to backstab a dead guy.

He's not literally dead. Marcos is just an identity. The man behind Subcomandante Marcos has changed his identity to Subcomandante Galeano.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

why would you shun your own martyr and the only guy giving you any kind of PR and holding the organizations face together? its like if cuba should suddenly go "che gevara was a douche we have no connection to him". way to backstab a dead guy.
It's less an attempt to shun a valued leader and more of an attempt to put out there that anyone can be a valued leader. Figureheads and cults of personality are detrimental to the liberation of the proletariat as a class.

Other socialist figures have had similar thoughts, for example: "I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands." - Eugene Debs

[Rugged Collectivist]

He's not literally dead. Marcos is just an identity. The man behind Subcomandante Marcos has changed his identity to Subcomandante Galeano.

What's the point in changing his name if everyone knows his new one?

[Loco101]

how do i travel to chiapas and live work there and help keep zapatistas going

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

What's the point in changing his name if everyone knows his new one?

I'm sorry? Come again?

[Rugged Collectivist]

I'm sorry? Come again?

He can't just say "lol I'm Galeano now" and be done with it. People will still see him as Marcos.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

He can't just say "lol I'm Galeano now" and be done with it. People will still see him as Marcos.

The explanation of what purpose Marcos served had an impact on me when I read it. I no longer see him as 'Subcomandante Marcos'.

[Leftsolidarity]

He can't just say "lol I'm Galeano now" and be done with it. People will still see him as Marcos.

Well he received the name Marcos in the same way so I think people can view the person formerly known as Marcos in a different light. It's a tradition of carrying on a legacy and showing a turn in the EZLN's approach publicly.

[mindsword]

what.. what?

also Marcos was just like a flagship thing? like Uncle Sam is to USA?

im very confused. is he dead or did he change his identity? Galeano just doesnt ring very well...... Maybe its a getting used to thing.

[Jemdet Nasr]

what.. what?

also Marcos was just like a flagship thing? like Uncle Sam is to USA?

im very confused. is he dead or did he change his identity? Galeano just doesnt ring very well...... Maybe its a getting used to thing.

The subcommandante formerly known as Marcos has become Insurgente Galeano. He changed his nom de guerre for two reasons: to honor the fallen comrade Galeano, and to signal a shift from his former persona and PR work to his new, less visible persona and the EZLN's new PR campaign.

I will admit though that I'm taking a while to get used to his new identity and to really start to think of him as Galeano.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Marcos IS literally dead, in that Marcos was a character on the "world stage" who has passed away. The meat, flesh and consciousness of the person who played Marcos is still alive, but Marcos is dead. We should not think of Marcos like we think of Lenin or some other revolutionary leader, because he was never that - he was a spokesperson chosen by a movement which did not want to identify the public voices of their leaders with individuals.

Anyone who doesn't understand this probably doesn't understand why a "false" identity like Subcommandante Marcos was chosen over the "actual" identity of the person who "played" his part.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

Marcos IS literally dead, in that Marcos was a character on the "world stage" who has passed away. The meat, flesh and consciousness of the person who played Marcos is still alive, but Marcos is dead. We should not think of Marcos like we think of Lenin or some other revolutionary leader, because he was never that - he was a spokesperson chosen by a movement which did not want to identify the public voices of their leaders with individuals.

Anyone who doesn't understand this probably doesn't understand why a "false" identity like Subcommandante Marcos was chosen over the "actual" identity of the person who "played" his part.

Literally in this case means that the person behind Marcos is dead. Hence why I said not literally. To literally kill someone means to end the life of that organism. The organism is not dead, just the label.

[Zukunftsmusik]

Marcos IS literally dead, in that Marcos was a character on the "world stage" who has passed away. The meat, flesh and consciousness of the person who played Marcos is still alive, but Marcos is dead. We should not think of Marcos like we think of Lenin or some other revolutionary leader, because he was never that - he was a spokesperson chosen by a movement which did not want to identify the public voices of their leaders with individuals.

Anyone who doesn't understand this probably doesn't understand why a "false" identity like Subcommandante Marcos was chosen over the "actual" identity of the person who "played" his part.

Why is this event so cloaked in mysticism? I think there's a pretty good reason people are confused over this.

[Remus Bleys]

So the zapasitas... Pretty clear at this point it is nothing more than Soft maoism anarchists think they can jerk to without sacrificing principles.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

Why is this event so cloaked in mysticism? I think there's a pretty good reason people are confused over this.

I have no idea. It seems simple to me, Subcomandante Marcos is an identity. That identity has been removed and replace with Subcomandante Galeano. This happened to curb and ultimately remove the meshing of the EZLN and Zapatismo with the identity of Subcomandante Marcos, to remove the unintentional cult of personality and celebrity status of the identity.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Why is this event so cloaked in mysticism? I think there's a pretty good reason people are confused over this.

Given that the ELZN has, for many years now, functioned as the hippest and biggest reality show on Earth, the mysticism is there primarily for marketing reasons. Revolutionaries change their names in secret because they're afraid of being caught. "Holograms" change them in public, ostensibly to negate their personality but really to affirm it.

[blake 3:17]

On Friday May 2, 2014 an Indigenous Zapatista teacher, Jose Luis Solís López -- known by his name 'in the struggle' as 'Compañero Galeano' -- was ambushed and murdered. He was beaten with rocks and clubs, hacked with a machete, shot in the leg and chest, and as he lay on the ground gasping for air -- he was executed by a final bullet to the head.

The reason he was subjected to this callous violence varies depending upon what account is heard or read. But in truth, he was assassinated because he was Indigenous, because he was a teacher, because he was humble and more specifically -- because he was a Zapatista. And in a contemporary global system of neoliberal production and colonial governance, people like Galeano are deemed to be threats -- threats that need to be killed in cold blood and suffer brutal deaths.


Emphasis mine. Source: http://rabble.ca/news/2014/06/death-zapatista-neoliberalisms-assault-on-indigenous-autonomy

[blake 3:17]

Excuse the double post -- I find it reprehensible that so called revolutionaries mock the most beautiful and successful revolutionary movement of the last 20 years.

@Loco101 -- the Zapatistas have usually called for friends and allies to act as Zapatistas in their own communities.

[Skyhilist]

So the zapasitas... Pretty clear at this point it is nothing more than Soft maoism anarchists think they can jerk to without sacrificing principles.

Lol you don't like anyone these days do you

*waits for indignant snide response*

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Emphasis mine. Source: http://rabble.ca/news/2014/06/death-zapatista-neoliberalisms-assault-on-indigenous-autonomy

During the bloody civil war in El Salvador, paternalistic, "moderate" Catholic functionaries, who were surely far from anything resembling leftism, were killed alongside actual leftists. Being targeted by a paranoid bourgeois state does not make one a leftist, let alone a good leftist.

I am ill-equipped to judge the beauty of the Zapatista movement, but I can and will comment on their accomplishments: a fat nothing. The EZLN started as a militant struggle organisation, not exactly correct as far as theory goes, but their actions engaged the bourgeois state at the basic level - the level of violence, territorial control etc. Now they are a media project - hence the metamorphosis of the former "subcommandante" into a "delegate", touring the country and organising workshops, speeches, writing articles and so on. And in opposition to what? Not in opposition to capitalism, the private ownership of the means of production, but a nebulous "neoliberalism".

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Well considering the geopolitical situation they have to work with they could have gone in two directions:

1. Pointless and suicidal armed struggle against the Mexican state (something Marcos and the the precursors to the elzn had already tried)

2. Exploit the relative autonomy they had gained to provide a semi-decent life for the people living in their regions. While at least serving as a nice bit of living propaganda for what remains of the left.

I do feel that their rhetoric has been toned down in recent years, but even if that wasn't the case its not as if communism was going to come about solely from a group of impoverished peasants from a back water state in Mexico. Their staunchest allies in the west are for sure guilty of pumping them up to be something they aren't, but their critics on the left are almost without exception talking out of their asses. A bunch of cold war relics who apparently love watching poorly armed guerillas get pulped by state security forces for purely symbolic reasons.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

Excuse the double post -- I find it reprehensible that so called revolutionaries mock the most beautiful and successful revolutionary movement of the last 20 years.

@Loco101 -- the Zapatistas have usually called for friends and allies to act as Zapatistas in their own communities.

Subcomandante Galeano in his first communique actually pointed out the racism within the revolutionary left. Interesting how he points out that the 'cult of individualism finds in the cult of vanguardism its most fanatical extreme'.


And it is this precisely — that the indigenous rule, and now with an indigenous person as the spokesperson and chief — that terrifies them, repels them, and finally sends them looking for someone requiring vanguards, bosses, and leaders. Because there is also racism on the left, above all among that left which claims to be revolutionary.

Subcomandante Moises is referred to as chief here because he is part of the EZLN.

The only aspect of them that I endorse is the attention that they have received for the indigenous rights cause in Chiapas. The rest I am neutral towards/slightly warm.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Why is this event so cloaked in mysticism? I think there's a pretty good reason people are confused over this.

The point is that Subcommandante Marcos was a stage identity which an ex-maoist professor in the EZLN took on to act as a sort of quasi-anonymous spokesperson.


During the bloody civil war in El Salvador, paternalistic, "moderate" Catholic functionaries, who were surely far from anything resembling leftism, were killed alongside actual leftists. Being targeted by a paranoid bourgeois state does not make one a leftist, let alone a good leftist.

I am ill-equipped to judge the beauty of the Zapatista movement, but I can and will comment on their accomplishments: a fat nothing. The EZLN started as a militant struggle organisation, not exactly correct as far as theory goes, but their actions engaged the bourgeois state at the basic level - the level of violence, territorial control etc. Now they are a media project - hence the metamorphosis of the former "subcommandante" into a "delegate", touring the country and organising workshops, speeches, writing articles and so on. And in opposition to what? Not in opposition to capitalism, the private ownership of the means of production, but a nebulous "neoliberalism".

I think the Zapatistas accomplished a lot for the communities which actually participated in their movement. Their failure wasn't in their ability to create collective political and economic power for their supporters, it was their inability to spread outside the jungles of Eastern Chiapas into the rest of Mexico and organize the urban working class.

I think the Zapatistas deserve criticism (as does every movement), but I think it's unfair to dismiss their achievements or their commitment to revolutionary politics. They are a movement of incredibly poor peasants who live in remote, traditional agrarian collectives and are cut off linguistically from most other people in Mexico, as well as one another. Their use of the media was both necessary and effective (it probably staved off a full Mexican military assault and elimination of their movement by force, in addition to the possibility of ruthless violence against the communities which supported it) and I think they did the best an indigenous peasant movement immediately after the fall of the USSR could do with limited arms and no international backing. Again, whatever ideological limitations and practical failures they may have, their achievements (modest as they may be) and opposition to capitalism and imperialism should not be scoffed at.

[USAneedsCommunism]

You know its real hard to wake up the great majority of poor mexican people, who are very mind-controlled by the catholic church, by traditions, by art, by music and by mexican films. Art, music, films and soap operas in that country are a powerful weapon that works as a tool to sedate poor people there

[The Modern Prometheus]

So the zapasitas... Pretty clear at this point it is nothing more than Soft maoism anarchists think they can jerk to without sacrificing principles.

Maoist Anarchists? Umm those 2 ideologies are not really alike at all and the EZLN are certainly not Maoist. They are Anarchist Communists not Marxist-Leninist-Maoists. Though they do have some characteristics of a national liberation organization they are still far more Anarchist then ones of the past.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Confound this thread. Confusing and stupid. Meh.