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Mexico City's historic downtown plaza, the Zócalo, was jammed with 100,000 people on the afternoon of Sunday, Mar. 11. News helicopters flew overhead, and hundreds of spectators crowded the balconies of surrounding hotels and government offices, waiting for a flatbed trailer carrying 24 guerrilla leaders from the Zapatista Army of National Liberation to roll into the plaza.
It was the culmination of a two-week, 2,100-mile trek from the jungle of the southern state of Chiapas to the political epicenter of Mexico. When the ski-masked, fatigues-clad but unarmed guerrillas stepped onto a stage just in front of the National Palace, the crowd cheered. Then, an Indian shaman performed a ritual cleansing ceremony.
"HELP US." Subcommander Marcos, the pipe-smoking, Jesuit-educated former university professor who has led the Zapatista struggle for Indian rights in the Chiapas rain forest for more than a decade, spoke to the crowd for just 20 minutes. "No longer are we ashamed of the color of our skin. We are proud to see that we are the color of the earth," said Marcos, whose blue eyes and tall stature mark him as the only non-Indian among the Zapatista leadership.
Then he added what could best be described as a plea: "They say we're nothing more than a photo opportunity, an anecdote, a spectacle, a perishable product with a rapidly approaching expiration date. We're not coming to tell you what to do. We're coming to ask that you help us."
The crowd responded: "You're not alone! You're not alone!" Next to me, a 17-year-old high school student held up one end of a banner depicting a Rubenesque figure of a reclining naked woman wearing a ski mask and cradling a submachine gun. The poster read: "With war, there's no democracy, land, or freedom." I asked the student, Adrián Correa, why he was there. "We want to see a solution to the Chiapas conflict. It's up to President [Vicente] Fox and the Congress to make it happen now."
WELL-TIMED ATTACK. Mexico has changed dramatically since the Zapatistas burst onto the scene on January 1, 1994, taking over a handful of small towns in the Chiapas countryside. The publicity-savvy Zapatistas had chosen their moment carefully: They attacked on the day the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect, and they did so to protest the exclusion of Mexico's 10 million indigenous people from the benefits of free trade.
In doing so, the Zapatistas were among the first to protest globalization -- long before protesters in Seattle stormed trade talks and farmers in Europe trashed McDonald's. Although Mexico has benefited from membership in NAFTA as exports have tripled since 1994, the message of Mexico's home-grown guerrilla movement still rings true: Countries should not be content merely with participating in the global economy. They must make sure that the benefits of free trade trickle down to the poor.
For seven years, Marcos and his ragtag army have hammered home that theme, mostly through their Web site (www.ezln.org) and a series of rambling communiques and interviews that the enigmatic Marcos granted in his jungle hideout. Encircled by tens of thousands of Mexican Army troops, the guerrillas were never a military threat. Indeed, some of them carried carved wooden guns in the two-week armed conflict that claimed 145 lives back in 1994.
"ANYONE CAN COMPLAIN." But they didn't lack international supporters. Sympathizers from Europe, the U.S., and Canada trekked to Chiapas to visit Marcos' jungle outpost, a hamlet called Reality, anxious to see first-hand one of the world's few active guerrilla movements. At the rally, several prominent supporters showed up, including Danielle Mitterrand, the widow of the former French President, Portuguese Nobel prize-winning writer José Saramago, and French antiglobalization activist José Bové.
For years, the Mexican government, citing a ban on political activity by foreigners, expelled those who dared show their solidarity with the Zapatistas. But when Fox won the presidency last year, he stopped that practice. "This march demonstrates that we already live in a mature democracy where anyone can express himself, where anyone can complain, and where anyone can shout or criticize the President," Fox said in his weekly radio address on Saturday. He also accepted the Zapatistas in Mexico City, the seat of government. "Welcome to the political arena," Fox told them.
Indeed, the Zapatistas seem to have left the jungle for good and are expected to form some sort of left-of-the-mainstream political action group. Although Mexico continues to be a country where a vast gulf separates rich and poor, Marcos and his followers cannot help but have noticed that the political scene has changed dramatically with the ouster last year of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), breaking up its corrupt, often feudalistic rule. If they want to get their message across in today's Mexico, they're better off participating in the political system.
PRESIDENTIAL OVERTURES. Although the Zapatistas and Mexico's left distrust former Coca-Cola exec Fox and his center-right National Action Party (PAN), it's hard for them to compete with Fox's popularity or his recent blitz of pro-Indian initiatives. Fox has worked hard to accommodate the Zapatistas' demands. Minutes after taking office last Dec. 1, he ordered the Mexican army to begin withdrawing from areas surrounding the guerrillas' jungle outposts. He released nearly two dozen Zapatista political prisoners. Fox also named Xóchitl Gálvez, an indigenous woman who rose from extreme poverty to become a much-admired high-tech entrepreneur and philanthropist, as his presidential adviser on indigenous affairs.
Fox had hoped Marcos would be impressed by the initiatives, and last week he invited the masked guerrilla to visit him at Los Pinos, the presidential palace. Marcos shunned the invitation, suspicious of the government's motives and dismissive of Fox's sincerity. Indeed, at the Mexico City rally, a woman rebel leader named Esther who spoke to the crowd ridiculed Fox's program to provide microcredits to the country's poor, saying: "We don't want small jobs, Volkswagens, or TV sets." Marcos says: "It's time for this country to stop being shamefully dressed only in the color of money."
Many in the crowd agreed. And it was a mixed bunch: From spiked-haired punks to middle-class bureaucrats and indigenous families dressed in the embroidered huipiles of one of Chiapas' dozens of ethnic groups. As Marcos & Co. stepped back onto the truck that would take them to a university campus, where they'll camp out for now, the crowd dispersed peacefully.
I joined the stream of people walking back to the subway, city buses, and parked cars, and I spoke to Raúl and Concepción Delgado, both architects, who had brought their 12- and 17-year-old sons to the rally. "We wanted them to understand there are many Mexicos -- the Mexico that everyone sees, and the Mexico that few want to see. If we want a future for everyone in this country, there has to be a fairer distribution of wealth."
"ZAPATOUR" T-SHIRTS. The Zapatista leaders have pledged to stay in Mexico City until the indigenous-rights bill is passed. They may have a long wait: Some members of Congress are worried that the law, which would grant local autonomy and control of some natural resources to indigenous communities, could divide the country by giving extra-constitutional rights to the country's 10 million Indians, just 10% of the population. Some have expressed concern that secret balloting and women's rights -- two issues that have only recently become a key priority in Mexico's fledging multiparty democracy -- would not be guaranteed under the centuries-old traditions of hierarchical indigenous society.
But at least the weapons have been laid down, and the dialogue has begun. As the plaza emptied, vendors slashed prices on the wares they had been noisily hawking even during Marcos' speech. T-shirts featuring an image of Marcos on the front and a city-by-city listing of the so-called "Zapatour" route on the back -- as if the two-week caravan had been a rock-band tour -- were the most popular item.
Black guerrilla ski masks emblazoned with the logotype of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation were still going for 30 pesos, but as the bright sun blazed, vendors were accepting the best offers. "Get your Marcos memorabilia now! It may be your last chance!" shouted Dulce Zúñiga, a 15-year-old vendor. If democratic dialogue flourishes as hoped, she may be right.
Smith has covered Mexican politics and economics for BusinessWeek since 1992, when the North American Free Trade Agreement was being negotiated Edited by Thane Peterson
Copyright 2001 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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