Background
The
Mexican government alleges Marcos to be Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, of
Tampico,
Tamaulipas. Born in Mexico to
Spanish immigrants, Guillén attended high school at Instituto Cultural Tampico, a
Jesuit school in Tampico, where he presumably became acquainted with
Liberation Theology.
[5][6] Guillén later moved to
Mexico City where he graduated from the
Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), then received a master's degree in philosophy at the
National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and began work as a professor at the UAM, after which he left. While Marcos has always denied being Rafael Guillén, Guillén's family are unaware of what happened to him and they refuse to say if they think Marcos and Guillén are the same person or not. Guillén's family is deeply involved in Tamaulipas politics. Guillén's sister, Mercedes del Carmen Guillén Vicente, is the Attorney General of the State of Tamaulipas, and a very influential member of the
Institutional Revolutionary Party, the party that governed Mexico for more than 70 years. During the Great March to Mexico City in 2001, Marcos visited the UNAM and during his speech he made clear that he had at least been there before.
[7][8][9]Like many of his generation, Guillén was radicalized by the
events of 1968 and became a militant in a
Maoist organization known as the National Liberation Forces. However, the encounter with the outlook of the
indigenous peasants of
Chiapas, the political struggles within the FLN, and out of the failure of the Chipas uprising, he has embraced an approach to social revolution that has important parallels to the theories of
Antonio Gramsci, which were popular in Mexico during his time at the university.
When asked about his first days in Chiapas in the documentary
A Place Called Chiapas, Marcos said:
Imagine a person who comes from an urban culture. One of the world’s biggest cities, with a university education, accustomed to city life. It’s like landing on another planet. The language, the surroundings are new. You’re seen as an alien from outer space. Everything tells you: “Leave. This is a mistake. You don’t belong in this place.” And it’s said in a foreign tongue. But they let you know, the people, the way they act; the weather, the way it rains; the sunshine; the earth, the way it turns to mud; the diseases; the insects; homesickness. You’re being told. “You don’t belong here.” If that’s not a nightmare, what is?
Also in this documentary by
Nettie Wild, one is allowed to listen to the powerful rhetoric of the Zapatistas. This is conducted in Spanish, not the native Mayan tongues. With only his eyes and pipe being visible he addresses the film maker: "It is our day,
day of the dead". Marcos reveals the Zapatista belief that he is a dead-man and so are the Zapatistas
Much of his writings – articles, poems, speeches and letters – have been compiled into a book:
Our Word is Our Weapon. In 2005 he wrote a novel called
The Uncomfortable Dead, in conjunction with crime writer
Paco Ignacio Taibo II.
Political and philosophical writings
From 1992 through 2006, Marcos wrote more than 200 essays and stories and published 21 books in a total of at least 33 editions, amply documenting his
political and
philosophical views (see Bibliography). The essays and stories are recycled in the books. Marcos tends to prefer indirect expression; his writings are often
fables. Some, however, are earthy and direct. In a January 2003, letter to
Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (the Basque ETA), titled "I shit on all the
revolutionary vanguards of this planet," Marcos says "We teach [children of the EZLN] that there are so many words like colors and that there are so many thoughts because within them is the world where words are born...And we teach them to speak the truth, that is to say, to speak with their hearts."
[10]One of Marcos's most widely known books, La Historia de los Colores, is a story written for children. Based on a
Mayan creation myth, it teaches
tolerance and respect for
diversity.
[11] The book was to have been published in English translation with support from the U.S.
National Endowment for the Arts, but in 1999 the Endowment abruptly cancelled its grant after questions to its chairman,
William J. Ivey, from a
newspaper reporter.
[12][13] The
Lannan Foundation stepped in with support after the NEA withdrew.
[14]Although Marcos's
political philosophy has sometimes been characterized as "
Marxist," his broadly
populist writings concentrate on unjust treatment of people by both
business and the
State, giving Zapatista ideology a strong
anarchist tinge. In a well known 1992
essay, Marcos begins each of his five "chapters" in a characteristic style of complaint:
[15]"This chapter tells how the supreme government was affected by the poverty of the Indigenous peoples of Chiapas and endowed the area with hotels, prisons, barracks, and a military airport. It also tells how the beast feeds on the blood of the people, as well as other miserable and unfortunate happenings...A handful of businesses, one of which is the Mexican State, takes all the wealth out of Chiapas and in exchange leave behind their mortal and pestilent mark."
"This chapter tells the story of the Governor, an apprentice to the viceroy, and his heroic fight against the progressive clergy and his adventures with the feudal cattle, coffee and business lords."
"This chapter tells how the viceroy had a brilliant idea and put this idea into practice. It also tells how the Empire decreed the death of socialism, and then put itself to the task of carrying out this decree to the great joy of the powerful, the distress of the weak and the indifference of the majority."
"This chapter tells how dignity and defiance joined hands in the Southeast, and how Jacinto Pe'rez's phantoms run through the Chiapaneco highlands. It also tells of a patience that has run out and of other happenings which have been ignored but have major consequences."
"This chapter tells how the dignity of the Indigenous people tried to make itself heard, but its voice only lasted a little while. It also tells how voices that spoke before are speaking again today and that the Indians are walking forward once again but this time with firm footsteps."
The elliptical,
ironic and
romantic style of Marcos's writings may be a way of keeping a distance from the painful circumstances that he reports and protests. In any event, his huge output of words has a purpose, as stated in a 2002 book title, Our Word is Our Weapon.
[16][17][
edit] The Other Campaign
In a widely noted article by Marcos, the
Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) announced
"La Otra Campaña" / "The Other Campaign" in June 2005, at the start of
campaigns for the
Mexican elections of 2006.
[18] The EZLN does not intend to run or promote
candidates. Instead it calls for a new
constitution prohibiting
privatization of
public resources and providing
autonomy for an estimated 57
indigenous populations. More than 900 organizations have joined The Other Campaign.
[19] The Other Campaign also announced what could be a temporary reorganization of the EZLN, closing the caracoles / councils, urging international supporters to leave those areas, closing the EZLN information center in San Cristóbal de Las Casas and working in a "clandestine and nomadic manner."
[20]On January 1, 2006, Marcos began a
tour of all 31 Mexican states. In an interview several years before, Marcos explained his attitude toward the Mexican government:
[21]"The State Party System is corrupt, it is involved in drug trafficking, it has a wake of deceit, of lies, and of loss of legitimacy with the Mexican nation."
He travelled on a black motorbike in remembrance of
Che Guevara's 1952 journey through South America, immortalized in the slain revolutionary's personal memoir entitled
The Motorcycle Diaries.
[22] During the tour, he also has changed his name to "Delegado Cero" / "Delegate Zero." He appeared on Mexican national television on Tuesday, May 9, 2006. Commenting on a riot that began after police tried to evict flower sellers from their stalls in the town of Texcoco, widely reported in Mexico,
[23] Marcos said, "The state police have always been distinguished by their brutality...Enter the state police, and things get out of hand. Enter the federal government, and things get out of hand, and one creates this atmosphere of repression."
[24]Marcos and other EZLN spokespersons reject as models what they view as
neoliberal regimes in
South America, including the governments in
Brazil,
Argentina,
Venezuela,
Uruguay and
Bolivia as of 2006, claiming that these governments did not and will not deliver meaningful changes. As potential leadership for Mexico, they say, in particular, that a government headed by
Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) candidate
Andrés Manuel López Obrador would resemble that of former president
Carlos Salinas de Gortari and would refuse to abandon policies imposed by the
World Bank, the
World Trade Organization and the
United States. The "
Town Meeting" style of The Other Campaign, scheduled for January through July 2006, has had some effect on López Obrador, the former mayor of
Mexico City and presidential candidate, who campaigned in
Chiapas during December, 2005.
[25] Marcos never endorsed López Obrador and rebuked the entire electoral system.
[
edit] Mascot
Subcomandante Marcos travels with an animal mascot, a deformed
rooster he calls "el pingüino" ('the penguin'). According to a New York Times article of January 6, 2006, Marcos uses the animal as a symbol of the various disenfranchised people he champions.
[26]
