It was the night of New Year’s Eve, 1994 in San Cristobal de las Casas, a small city in the Mexican state of Chiapas. An army of guerilla warriors blocked off all roads to the city and seized the town square. Their spokesman emerged, wearing a green army uniform and a black ski mask. He smoked a pipe. He called himself Subcomandante Marcos and his image would soon spread around the world. Marcos’s army was called the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional or the EZLN, though they commonly came to known as the Zapatistas. Since it was the day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, Subcomandante Marcos declared this to be an uprising against the establishment, one that would put the rights of Mexico’s Indios in the spotlight in a bid for higher living standards and greater political autonomy. Nick Henck’s Subcommander Marcos: The Man and the Mask gives a comprehensive history of the EZLN movement and the most in depth biography of its leader to this day.
After the uprising in 1994, and a few years into the 2000s, Subcomandante Marcos’s identity remained a mystery even though his image and message spread rapidly around the world due to media coverage. Nick Henck did a bit of digging around to find out who he was and where he came from. The first third of the book gives as much biographical information as he could find. Marcos’s true identity was that of Rafael Sebastian Guillen Vicente. He came from a middle class background, got a college education at a liberal arts university, worked as a philosophy professor at another university, and got drawn into left wing politics. Initially he was a Marxist and joined a radical activist organization called the FLN. Their plan was to overthrow the Mexican government and establish a new socialist state. This section on the early life and radicalization of Marcos wears a little thin at times. The author gets sidetracked into some long discussions about the political climate of Mexico and its history that don’t help to clarify or add much to the overall story of Marcos and the EZLN. The narrative picks up again in the second section.
By the mid-1980s, Marcos had had enough of revolutionary theory and decided he wanted action. The FLN assigned him to the jungle highlands of Chiapas to prepare for guerilla warfare. He attracted a loyal army of Mayan Indios and landless agricultural workers. Marcos learned to speak their language, lived according to their lifestyle, and ate only the food that they ate. Critics of Marcos have accused him of exploiting the Indios and luring them into a political conflict they otherwise would not have engaged in. His supporters have countered this accusation by pointing out that he completely integrated into their society and became one of them. He still lives a humble existence with the Mayan people to this day. In any case, he spent ten years preparing the EZLN army for the uprising of 1994.
One interesting problem Marcos encountered along the way was related to the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of communism. Marcos had been teaching Marxist and Maoist political theory to his followers for some time when the Iron Curtain came down and suddenly the politics of the Left looked irrelevant. The FLN realized they had to change their message or else they would never be taken seriously so Marcos eventually phased out the Marxist jargon and began emphasizing the need for stronger representation of Indigenous people in the Mexican government. He came to advocate for the Mayan people to have their own semi-autonomous government, acting as a sub-nation within the nation of Mexico.
The third section of the book explains what happened after the initial uprising of 1994. After some minor skirmishes that resulted in a small number of Zapatista deaths, Marcos realized his guerilla army was outgunned. The uprising caught the media’s attention and he seized on the opportunity to bring the cause to the public. The Mexican middle classes came out in strong support for the Zapatistas and as long as they stayed in the eye of the press, the EZLN maintained their support. Subcomandante Marcos also pioneered the use of the internet as a tool of revolution. He reached a worldwide audience by writing communiques that were witty, imaginative, and a bit fantastical. Some of his supporters even claim they had valid literary merit though only time will tell if that is true. Pro-Zapatista activist groups sprung up on every continent and suddenly the subject of post-colonialism and the rights of Indigenous people around the world filtered into a new Leftist reorientation, carrying over into the anti-WTO protests in Seattle in 2000 and Occupy Wall Street a few years later.
Subcomandante Marcos was winning a war of wits with the Mexican government. This probably was aided by the widespread opposition to Mexico’s PRI party that had been ruling the country since the 1930s. With minimal violence, a high profile media campaign, massive street demonstrations and conferences of varying success, the Zapatistas managed to establish their own alternative government based on traditional Mayan principles in Chiapas and also got their cause brought up in a Mexican congressional hearing. Finally they succeeded in striking a deal with the government that was beneficial to the Indios of Mexico. In the end, Marcos hed led a semi-successful political movement with minimal bloodshed. Subcomandante Marcos has since remained reclusive, living with his people in the highlands of Chiapas. He remains a mysterious figure and actually sounds like a pretty decent guy. One thing you can say after reading this biography is that he was authentic and sincere.
There isn’t much to critisize in this book. There are some slow parts in the beginning that border on irrelevancy, but everything else is clearly written and sufficiently explained. There are some missing pieces that could have been included though. A brief description of Mayan culture would have enhanced the context and a little more description of the jungles and mountains would give it an added depth. It would also be helpful to hear more from the Mayan people themselves about the EZLN; it would be interesting to hear what they thought of the outsider Marcos considering he was a middle class mestizo who came to them from Mexico City. Although it is beyond the scope of this book, it would also be interesting to learn about the long term effects of the EZLN uprising and whether or not it continues to make a difference in the lives of Mexico’s Indigenous people.
This is the best book about Subcomandante Marcos, the Zapatistas, and the January 1, 1994 uprising I know of so far. It’s also inspirational. Marcos spent a decade preparing for a guerilla war. Once it started he realized that bloodshed would lead to nothing but mass suicide for his followers. He was quick-witted and pragmatic enough to see how he could influence public opinion without having to resort to further violence. More than ten years after the initial siege of San Cristobal de las Casas, the EZLN were able to get something they wanted. Patience, adaptability, and communication were their greatest allies. They proved that change doesn’t have to be immediate or even grandiose. There is a lot for future activists to learn here. The fact that this political movement happened fairly recently in Mexico makes it all that much more interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment