Mexico City (AFP) - When the masked Subcomandante Marcos emerged in
Mexico's southern mountains with his band of Zapatista rebels on January
1, 1994, they demanded change for the destitute indigenous people of
Chiapas.
The army was deployed and dozens died in a 12-day battle that led to a ceasefire and a peace pact two years later.
But 20 years later, the
pipe-smoking revolutionary and his comrades have retreated to remote
communities, the media spotlight has dimmed and Chiapas remains Mexico's
poorest state.
The Zapatistas
will mark their rebellion's anniversary with fiestas in their villages
on Wednesday, but not with the same attention they received when they
first burst into the scene.
The
mysterious Marcos, who used to greet journalists in his jungle hideouts
for interviews, has shunned the media, choosing instead to make
occasional statements on his movement's website.
His
latest missive on December 28 was a rambling, 3,250-word statement that
cites the classic "Moby Dick," questions the veracity of biographies
and rails against the Mexican presidents of the past 20 years.
"In
December 2013, it is just as cold as 20 years ago, and today, like back
then, the same flag protects us: that of rebellion," Marcos wrote.
Taking
its name from 1910 revolution hero Emiliano Zapata, the Zapatista
National Liberation Army (EZLN) appeared the same day that the North
America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force.
Many in Mexico at the time
desperately feared free trade with the United States would crush
traditional lifestyles and farming -- potentially upending cornerstones
of traditional society.
But
the emergence of thousands of leftist rebels on New Year's Day 1994
caught the government of then president Carlos Salinas de Gortari off
guard.
Fast-forward
to January 1, 2014: Mexico boasts a thriving manufacturing sector and a
growing middle-class fuelled by massive trade with the United States
and Canada under NAFTA.
An old
enemy of Marcos -- the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that was
ousted in 2000 after ruling Mexico for 71 years like a single-party
state -- returned to power in 2012.
The
new president, Enrique Pena Nieto, has pledged to lead a new,
democratic PRI, even launching his "Crusade Against Hunger" campaign in
Chiapas.
But despite the gains from NAFTA,
Latin America's second biggest economy remains mired in massive poverty
affecting almost half of 116 million Mexicans.
The
situation in Chiapas, meanwhile, has barely budged. A crushing three
quarters of the state's 4.8 million people living in poverty and one
third in extreme poverty.
The Zapatistas say the government has failed to fulfil the promises of the peace pact.
They
say their demands for land rights, housing, employment and education
have been ignored along with their call for constitutional reform to
grant them autonomy.
In 2001,
the Congress passed constitutional reform to give indigenous communities
more rights. But the legislation lacked the autonomy demanded by the
EZLN, leading the Zapatistas to suspend dialogue with the government.
Tired
of waiting for the government to act, the Zapatistas have created their
own autonomous justice, health and education systems in five
municipalities they dubbed "caracoles," or shells.
Jaime
Martinez Veloz, the government's commissioner for Dialogue with
Indigenous People, said he was confident Pena Nieto's administration
would revive the reform in 2014 to grant them the autonomy they want.
"The
root causes of the conflict are the same, and we are convinced that
they must be addressed by the Mexican state," Martinez Veloz told AFP.
But critics say the Zapatistas have done little themselves to improve the lot of their communities.
"Poverty
in areas dominated by the EZLN remains at the same level or worse. The
respectable life that Zapatismo promised does not even exist in the
territories that Zapatismo has controled since 1994," columnist Sergio
Sarmiento wrote in Reforma newspaper.
Marcos
answered critics in his last missive by pointing to this year's "Little
Zapatista School" program, which invited visitors to learn about the
EZLN's education, health and politico-economic programs.
Martinez Veloz defended the Zapatistas, saying they have undertaken several social programs despite scant funding.
"Many
people have tried to distort reality, saying the Zapatistas have had
state and government resources at their disposal," he said.
"The
Mexican state has a direct responsibility for poverty in the country,
in indigenous populations. The Zapatistas have nothing to do with that." source
