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TITLE: Mexico Zapatistas Take Indian Rights on Tour |
AUTHOR: Lorraine Orlandi |
PUB: Reuters |
DATE: February 23, 2001 |
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Rebel leader Subcommander Marcos sets out from his Chiapas stronghold on Sunday on a journey through Mexico to the capital, where he will try to persuade Mexican leaders to deliver rights for millions of disenfranchised Indians. On a two-week tour through the countryside to the doors of parliament in Mexico City, the masked rebel and two dozen fellow Zapatista commanders will seek to rally grass-roots support and pile pressure on the government to accept their conditions for peace in the strife-torn southern state. The march across 12 states is seen as a challenge to new President Vicente Fox, who has made concessions but not yet gone far enough to bring rebels back to peace talks. The rebels will travel unarmed. Chiapas Gov. Pablo Salazar announced on Friday that some 1,600 security troops would be assigned to protect them through the state. He urged other states to provide similar protection. The so-called Zapatour, which departs from this colonial city in the Indian heartland and culminates in Mexico City on March 11, is being compared to peasant revolutionary Emiliano Zapata's triumphant arrival in the Mexican capital in 1914 for its political impact and popular appeal. "I expect Marcos will enter Mexico City in a triumphal march, with at least a million people lined up in the streets wearing masks," said political commentator Sergio Sarmiento. Drawing international attention, the march reflects the public relations savvy that has been a hallmark of the Zapatista movement since it rose up on New Year's Day in 1994. City officials were expecting as many as 25,000 people from around the world to descend on San Cristobal to meet the rebel caravan's arrival on Saturday afternoon, said mayoral spokesman Rene Genaro Mandujano. The massive public demonstration will raise Marcos' profile, further legitimize the Zapatista cause and increase pressure on the government to act on rebel demands, analysts said. Asked what concrete results could come from the march, Harry Cleaver, a Chiapas expert at the University of Texas in Austin, said: "Peace. Peace, if we're lucky." Chiapas residents echoed that hope on Friday. "I don't believe there is any person of good will in Mexico who does not want peace accords signed," said Luis Arellano, a 23-year-old law student from San Cristobal. PEACE WEEKS AWAY Fox said this month a peace accord for Chiapas was "a few weeks away." His optimism was based on a series of unprecedented gestures by his government and the rebel leadership aimed at reviving the talks, which stalled in 1996. But Marcos and Fox have engaged in political shadow boxing in recent days. On Thursday, Marcos accused Fox of bad faith in his calls for a dialogue, while Fox defended his commitment to bringing about lasting peace in Chiapas. "If the accusatory tone by both sides continues this way during the march the most likely outcome is that they won't get anywhere," said Noel Pineda of the Fray Bartolome Human Rights Center in San Cristobal. The Zapatistas are demanding indigenous rights legislation as a prerequisite for renewing peace negotiations. Fox sent a rights measure to Congress in December in one of his first acts as president. It would grant autonomy to Indian communities, allow them communal ownership of land and permit them the use of traditional customs to choose leaders and dispense justice, writing those measures into the Constitution. Legislators across the political spectrum balk at the proposal, and Fox might have to do some arm-twisting even within his National Action Party to pass it. George Grayson, a Mexico scholar at William and Mary College in Virginia, called Marcos a "brilliant tactician" for maneuvering Fox into a political hard place before the two sides sit down to negotiate. While previous President Ernesto Zedillo alienated and largely isolated the Zapatistas, Fox has played into their hands, whether by accident or design, analysts said. "Fox said he would solve ???tes. He didn't do that, but he managed in 15 minutes to revive the Zapatista movement," Sarmiento said. "A lot of people will come out to see Marcos, take the children and see the guerrilla leader who managed to defeat the Mexican government." END |