[nasional_list] [ppiindia] The Zapatista's Return: A Masked Marxist on the Stump
- From: "Ambon" <sea@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <"Undisclosed-Recipient:;"@freelists.org>
- Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 02:55:36 +0100
** Forum Nasional Indonesia PPI India Mailing List **
** Untuk bergabung dg Milis Nasional kunjungi:
** Situs Milis: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/ **
** Beasiswa dalam negeri dan luar negeri S1 S2 S3 dan post-doctoral
scholarship, kunjungi
http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com
**http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/06/international/americas/06mexico.html
San Cristóbal Journal
The Zapatista's Return: A Masked Marxist on the Stump
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: January 6, 2006
SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico, Jan. 4 - This is the oddest political
campaign to emerge in Mexico in many a year.
Skip to next paragraph
Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
Marcos on tour, in San Cristóbal de las Casas on Wednesday.
Enlarge This Image
Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
Zapatista supporters of Subcommander Marcos awaited him in Palenque on Tuesday.
In his speeches, he blames "savage capitalism" and the rich for social problems
from gay-baiting to racism to domestic violence.
The candidate is a Marxist rebel leader who once started a civil war, wears a
ski mask, smokes a pipe, keeps a crippled rooster as a mascot and is not on the
ballot for any political office.
Yet the start of a six-month national tour led by the man known as Subcommander
Marcos has all the earmarks of a run-of-the-mill campaign for political office:
slogans, chants, partisan songs, rallies large and small, a campaign caravan
making stops in towns and cities, jabs at other politicians, cute presentations
from children and hugs from local community leaders, shaking hands with
admirers over a line of bodyguards, and the occasional obligation to kiss, or
at least hug, a baby or two.
Marcos, a captivating speaker who now calls himself Delegate Zero, even has a
stump speech of sorts, in which he blames "savage capitalism" and the sins of
the rich for everything from gay-baiting to racism to domestic violence.
He intends to deliver it all over the country in advance of the presidential
election in July, trying to convince voters that there is no real difference
among the three candidates from the major parties because all are going to
cater to an oligarchy of business leaders.
"In the coming days we are going to hear a ton of promises, lies, trying to
give us hope that, yes, things are now going to get better if we change one
government for another," he said Tuesday before a crowd of 4,000 masked
followers in the town square of Palenque, site of noted Maya ruins. "Time and
time again, every year, every three years, every six years, they sell us this
lie."
The crowd of masked supporters, many of them farmers bused in that morning,
held banners with slogans like "Death to the Free Trade Agreement" and "Death
to Neoliberal Globalization." A red flag with hammer and sickle flew in the
crowd. Nearby someone had strung up large portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and
Stalin.
"This is only going to change from the bottom and from the left," Marcos
continued, picking up a recurrent theme. Then he promised a better, more equal
world "where we can be respected for the work that we do, the value that we
have as human beings, and not for our bank accounts or, let's say, a car, the
type of vehicle we drive or the clothing we wear, a world where workers occupy
a place that they deserve."
Marcos launched what he calls "the other campaign" on New Year's Day,
surprising the nation by arriving in San Cristóbal de las Casas, the
mountainous town he took by force in an armed uprising 12 years ago, on a
motorcycle instead of a horse, his usual trademark. The spiffy machine was
equipped with a special box for his rooster, dubbed the Penguin, because it has
deformed feet and hobbles.
The leader of the Zapatista movement has promised a nonviolent movement and
President Vicente Fox has guaranteed his safe passage as he visits all 31
states. The first week, however, he has stuck to familiar turf in Chiapas,
where his rebel movement long ago ceased to be a military threat but has
thrived as an inspiration to left-wing idealists around the world.
For security, Marcos keeps his whereabouts at night a mystery and arrives at
events with a human shield of supporters, most in masks, among them women and
children.
In January 1994, Marcos led an army of Indian farmers out of the mountains and
took over the eastern part of the state of Chiapas, protesting the government's
neglect of indigenous peoples. The government struck back with a huge offensive
the following year, pushing the rebels back into the Lacandón jungle, which
covers most of eastern Chiapas. The authorities say Marcos is actually a white
college professor from a middle-class family whose name is Rafael Sebastián
Guillén Vicente.
Since the old corrupt single-party regime was toppled in the 2000 elections,
support for Marcos and the Zapatista Liberation Army has waned somewhat here.
The Fox government has poured more money into schools and antipoverty programs,
while keeping a heavy military presence in the region. In the meantime,
Congress has rejected some accords with the rebels that would have given Indian
communities greater autonomy.
Now, Marcos appears to be trying regain the national limelight with a
nonviolent campaign aimed not at winning office, but at building a broad
leftist movement to pressure politicians from the outside.
His emergence from the jungle comes as leftist and indigenous leaders are
making a comeback in many parts of Latin America, most recently in Bolivia with
the election of Evo Morales.
On Wednesday, Marcos returned to this colonial town and visited a poor
neighborhood on the outskirts, where he spoke to a few hundred people, mostly
of Maya origin, in the pouring rain, attacking the candidate of the
Institutional Revolutionary Party as a thief and saying the party had grown on
"the blood of Indians." That night he showed up at a festival in the main
square.
About 5,000 people, many of them tourists and expatriate Zapatista backers,
listened to hours of folk music before Marcos spoke. This time he used the
story of his crippled Penguin as parable for the disenfranchised with whom he
hopes to build a coalition: indigenous people, women, unionists, the young and
jobless, homosexuals, factory workers and small farmers. His goal, he says, is
"to transform society," not "from above, but from here below."
An adroit humorist, Marcos brought guffaws from the crowd as he described his
rooster's attempts to find love in the barnyard, which always ended in Penguin
falling over before he could mate.
That anecdote was told to persuade people to accept other kinds of love between
same-sex couples. When someone in the back of the crowd shouted that Marcos
could not heard, Marcos handled it like a seasoned stand-up comic.
"That's O.K.," he said. "This part is rated triple X. It's better you don't
hear it."
Pedro Cruz, a 49-year-old construction worker, is typical of the Mexican voters
he has been attracting to his speeches here. Like many working class people,
Mr. Cruz is disenchanted with politics and contends that even the leftist Party
of the Democratic Revolution will be corrupted by big business interests if its
candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is elected. He says he does not intend
to vote.
"Marcos is going to have a big influence, I think," he said. "The fact is, it
gives us some hope there might be some help for the poor."
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
Clean water saves lives. Help make water safe for our children.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/CHhStB/VREMAA/E2hLAA/BRUplB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
***************************************************************************
Berdikusi dg Santun & Elegan, dg Semangat Persahabatan. Menuju Indonesia yg
Lebih Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia
***************************************************************************
__________________________________________________________________________
Mohon Perhatian:
1. Harap tdk. memposting/reply yg menyinggung SARA (kecuali sbg otokritik)
2. Pesan yg akan direply harap dihapus, kecuali yg akan dikomentari.
3. Reading only, http://dear.to/ppi
4. Satu email perhari: ppiindia-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
5. No-email/web only: ppiindia-nomail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
6. kembali menerima email: ppiindia-normal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
ppiindia-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
** Forum Nasional Indonesia PPI India Mailing List **
** Untuk bergabung dg Milis Nasional kunjungi:
** Situs Milis: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/ **
** Beasiswa dalam negeri dan luar negeri S1 S2 S3 dan post-doctoral
scholarship, kunjungi
http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com **
Other related posts:
- » [nasional_list] [ppiindia] The Zapatista's Return: A Masked Marxist on the Stump
