Book Review - Subcommander Marcos: The Man and the Mask by Nick Henck

Subcommander Marcos:

The Man and the Mask

by Nick Henck

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.

 

Book Review & Analysis: The Secret Life Of a Satanist by Blanche Barton

The Secret Life Of a Satanist:

The Authorized Biography of Anton LaVey

by Blanche Barton

Back in the 1980s, there were two books my friends had that they would leave out for people to see. One was The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell. The other was The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey. Nobody took these books seriously. They were just for show and as far as I know, no one from back then ever used the former book to build any bombs although I do know a couple people who took the book’s advice and tried smoking banana peels. Don’t bother. The bombs don’t work and neither do the banana peels. Regarding the latter book, I also don’t know anybody who read it who became a Satanist, although I do know some who got into Wicca but that had nothing to do with The Satanic Bible. In fact, I’d say The Satanic Bible amounted to little more than bathroom reading. If you dug into the pile of dirty magazines stashed under some guys’ sinks you might find a copy and having a good read while doing what all humans do at the end point of their digestive systems.

Believe it or not, some people really do care about the biography of the Church of Satan’s founding father. The Secret Life Of a Satanist by Blanche Barton theoretically fulfills that need. There are better sources for legitimate information though.

This authorized biography starts out with lies and half truths about Anton LaVey’s ancestry and childhood. He was born in the 1930s to parents he claimed to be of Romani and Jewish heritage, having grandparents who emigrated from Transylvania, Romania. They were actually exclusively Ukrainian Jews according to immigration records. There isn’t a whole lot said about his upbringing except that he got bullied by his classmates and, according to him, it was because he was hung like a horse and they were jealous. Reading between the lines, I get more of a sense that they beat him up for acting like he was better than everybody else. Guys who carry the biggest baseball bats don’t ordinarily talk about it and those that do are usually just insecure. In any case, this pobrecito had a lonely childhood. In his teenage years, he had a striking appearance, not exactly handsome, but striking and photogenic. He liked wearing zoot suits and I can imagine people used to tell him he looked like the Devil which is something he probably took a little too close to heart.

The story gets interesting as he learns to play the organ, lives the life of a carny, and works for the Clyde Beatty circus as a lion tamer. I’m a real sucker for stories about carnies and circuses, but then I was sad to learn from other sources that the Clyde Beatty circus has no records of LaVey ever having been employed by them. The same can be said for other jobs he claimed to have had like being a crime scene photographer for the San Francisco police department, a psychic detective, and an organ player for the San Francisco ballet. Regardless of his dishonesty, LaVey says one significant thing about being a psychic investigator: people willingly want to be deceived. People sincerely want to believe their house is haunted when in reality the eerie moaning sound they hear is nothing but wind blowing through a small crack in an attic window. This insight is all you need to know to understand where Anton LaVey was coming from.

The book continues on with more lies. LaVey tells stories about a love affair with Marilyn Monroe, something which has been denied by people who knew both LaVey and Monroe. He claims to have had an affair with Jayne Mansfield which is a half truth. LaVey says she was in love with him but others say she thought he was a dork and she liked to tease him so she could laugh behind his back. Oh the cruelty of women. The interesting part of this story is that LaVey claims to have accidentally killed her. He says he put a curse on her jealous husband and then while cutting a clipping out of a newspaper, he accidentally cut through a photograph of her on the other side. The slice went through her neck and then she died in a car crash. You can believe that if you want, but beliefs aren’t facts. Besides, autopsy reports show that Jayne Mansfield’s head was not severed from her body in the car crash as many people believe. That was simply a rumor that spread after she died.

In Barton’s version of the founding of the Church of Satan in San Francisco in the 1960s. LaVey was making a living by giving lectures about dark subjects in the living room of his house which he painted black and kept a pet lion in. Since this attracted all kinds of eccentrics he came up with the idea of starting the world’s first Satanic church and began performing rituals involving pentagrams and nude women on altars for audiences. The media got excited about all this and drew the attention of hippies and other counter culturalists who LaVey despised. He also attracted a few people who were more sincere and possibly more clever than he was; when they challenged his leadership, he was unable to maintain control over the church and excommunicated them. Many went on to form their own cults and LaVey wrote them off as fakes. In reality, this exposed his weakness as a leader so he became a recluse and had minimal contact with other Satanists throughout the rest of his life. His daughter Zeena Schreck says he did little else at this time in his life besides lying around in his living room and barking out orders to his wife who kept the Church of Satan running mostly on her own. She divorced him in the 1980s which drove LaVey into bankruptcy. I guess his curses and spells couldn’t prevent that from happening.

The first half of this biography is a somewhat interesting story even if it buried under a half ton of bullshit. The second half isn’t so much of a biography as it is Anton LaVey making an awkward attempt at explaining his “philosophy”. I use the word “philosophy” loosely because there is no structure or well-thought out stances in it. It is more a rambling collection of thoughts and ideas that don’t add up to anything definite.

LaVey had some odd ideas. He believed trapezoids could be used to bring demons into our dimension from who knows where. These demons are like the monsters in H.P. Lovecraft stories. Never mind that Lovecraft wrote fiction and never tried to convince anybody otherwise. LaVey talked about what kinds of music and movies are sufficiently satanic for him. I’m not sure how Irving Berlin or Cole Porter were satanic; I guess he heard something there that the rest of us don’t. Although he believed in right wing politics, authoritarianism, and eugenics, he also didn’t like racism, censorship, or homophobia. Science fiction movies and TV shows are meant to program people to live in outer space and in the future, people will mostly have social and sexual relationships with androids. Isn’t this a somewhat accurate prediction of AI? Despite being a quasi-fascist ideologue, LaVey shared some views with counter-culturalists like a hatred of TV, a dislike of consumer culture and the soulless, mechanical lifestyles of mainstream Americans who do little more than work, sleep, and then go to work again. How any of this is a satanic philosophy, I don’t know. It’s just satanic because it’s what he thought and that’s all there is to it.

Speaking of androids and soullessness, Anton LaVey’s main hobby, aside from performing satanic rituals, was building androids which the rest of us would call “mannequins”. He talked about himself as if he was a modern incarnation of Michelangelo sculpting statues in his basement. But really he was just a guy making mannequins and dressing them up. He put all his androids on display in a speakeasy scene in his cellar. I admit it might be an interesting installment piece to see, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to find it. I guess these androids make a good substitute for the friends he didn’t have. At least they wouldn’t challenge his authority or talk back when he was being a dick the way real people would. Female mannequins never say no either so he could always get what he wanted from them. You’d think a guy who claimed to be the John Holmes of the San Francisco occult scene would have had a better sex life than that.

LaVey admits near the end of the book that he is nostalgic, particularly for the years prior to World War II. The way I see him now is that as a kid, he was fascinated by the world of adults and probably fantasized about what he would do when he came of age. Then he suffered an unremarkable adolescence in the blandly conformist restraint of the 1950s, invented a fabulist biography to cover it up, tried to get in on the counter-culture scene of the 1960s by starting a satanic cult but didn’t approve of the kinds of people he attracted. So he dropped out of society to be a solitary king in the castle of his house, a replica of the life he imagined adults having when he was a child, never growing up and ruling over a court of mannequins while peddling Church of Satan merchandise to pay the rent. Anton LaVey reminds me a lot of Jean des Esseintes, the eccentric aesthete in J.K. Huysmans’ novel Against Nature who can’t handle living among the nobodies of the real world and so retreats into the isolation of his chateau. I find a certain kind of appeal in living that way but it is undercut by a certain kind of cowardice and social incompetence too.

Anton LaVey always said that being satanic meant embracing the role of adversary. I’m not sure what he was adverse to or why he rejected it. It can’t simply be Christianity. Although he pointed out some of the hypocrisy in its followers, like the way Christians go to burlesque shows on Saturday night and then show up at church on Sunday, he didn’t display enough of an understanding of Christian theology to truly be against it. Was he an adversary to the entire world? That’s just too vague to be valid. His attitude was like a blind, knee jerk reaction to life without any depth of understanding behind it. LaVey tried to make himself look menacing and powerful, but he sounded more like a sloppy drunk sitting next to me in a bar, babbling about whatever came into his mind. Since I admit I like hearing from and reading about weird people, some of this is amusing but none of it is anything I can take seriously. The Secret Life Of a Satanist didn’t convince me to join the Church of Satan or any other cult. I’ve always thought Anton Szandor LaVey was a dork and this biography further confirmed that opinion. He’s like a strange guy at a party that takes his own oddity seriously when in reality, people just like having him around for the freaky kicks.

Anton LaVey claimed P.T. Barnum as an influence and so I will leave you with two paraphrases from that iconic American con man. People don’t mind being ripped off if they have fun in the process of being cheated. There’s a sucker born every minute. And that’s all you need to know to understand Anton LaVey.

 

Book Review: Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and The Germs by Brendan Mullen

Lexicon Devil:

The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and The Germs

by Brendan Mullen with Don Bolles and Adam Parfrey

      Punk rock took longer to catch on in Los Angeles than it did in the movement’s other major epicenters of New York and London. It’s not that Los Angeles wasn’t primed for it; glam rock was big there in the early 1970s and records from the east cost and the U.K. had found their way out West . For whatever reason, it just took a while to catch hold. But when it did, it exploded. The Runaways could be credited for being the first major band to catalyze the LA scene, but one band moved the whole thing forward by acting as a transition point from early punk to the hardcore punk of the 1980s. That band was the Germs with their singer Darby Crash. Brendan Mullen’s Lexicon Devil tells the story of the brief but seminal career of the band that took punk excess and degeneracy to a whole new level.

Like so many other books out there on the history of punk, Lexicon Devil is an oral history wherein quotes from interviews and articles are carefully pieced together to make a multi-voiced narrative about its subject matter. Scottish immigrant Brendan Mullen was a promoter and early club manager in Los Angeles and helped to get the scene moving. He works well as the compiler and editor of the story since he both observed and participated in the scene. Some of this information, and even some exactly matching quotes, appear in his other collaborative project on the Los Angeles punk movement We Got the Neutron Bomb. Some nitpickers might complain about that, but it works well especially when the re-used quotes fill in missing information, making the whole narrative hang together. If it works, you might as well do it.

Jan Paul Beahm was born into a broken family. His father was absent soon after the early years of his childhood and his mother was overbearing, manic, and histrionic. He went to an alternative high school based on the practices of Scientology and est. Only in California, right? Beahm considered L. Ron Hubbard to be a major influence on his thinking for the few short years he had left to live. It was at that high school where he made friends with George Ruthenberg, the kid who later became Pat Smear, the guitarist for the Germs (and Nirvana and Foo Fighters after that). (Damn, Pat Smear played in two legendary bands whose lead singers both killed themselves. How’s that for rotten luck?)

Beahm, who took the stage name Bobby Pyn, threw together a band of no-talent musicians and called themselves the Germs. Their concerts were little more than pranks where the band made noise and Bobby Pyn did Iggy Pop impressions, cutting his chest with broken glass and throwing food into the audience. They got a well-deserved reputation for being the worst band in L.A. But they weren’t taking themselves seriously and other people weren’t either. They developed a following, especially because Bobby Pyn, who changed his stage name again to Darby Crash, had a strange kind of charisma. He wasn’t a good looking kid, but he had an interesting face and a look of menace about him that was attractive to other punks. He was especially attractive with women and he always had a clique of female groupies around. He actually aspired to be a cult leader and Germs fans began wearing black armbands with blue circles on them. They also burned their wrists with cigarettes to mark themselves out as different from those who weren’t followers. But naive teenager with a philosophy cobbled together from the ideas of other cult leaders could only be limited in scope.

The overall context is not ignored. The growth of the West Hollywood punk scene is well-documented including a wide cast of people like The Go Gos, Rodney Bingenheimer, Joan Jett, the publishers of Slash fanzine, members of X, and all kinds of other people who participated in the scene. Stories about the legendary underground nightclub The Masque are told and the early punk lifestyle, heavy on the drugs and alcohol, is well detailed. Also of important detail is the rise of hardcore punk in the late 1970s and early 1980s after the Germs released their only album GI. The hardcore scene grew rapidly and attracted a lot of kids who didn’t fit in with the early punk scene. The new punks were more violent, more macho, and attracted a lot of negative attention from the police and local rednecks who became notorious for their violence against punks.

The narrative makes it look as though the transition of punk from a fun, ironic nihilism infused with gallows humor to slam dancing, gang fights, and hyper-aggresive adrenaline binges contributed to the downfall of Darby Crash. The singer just couldn’t adapt to the punk movement’s growth that he instigated with his band. The scene appeared to be leaving him behind. Darby Crash struggled with other issues too. He had gotten hooked on heroin and felt as though he had to keep his identity as a gay man secret, especially because the second wave of punk was decidedly more masculine in its presentation. He had also been talking about 86ing himself long before he put the Germs together.

The tragic ending and eulogizing isn’t overdone. Darby Crash’s suicide was ugly and depressing; it probably angered people more than it surprised them. The narrative says what it has to say and then ends. But the last paragraph is a quote from Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, and Temple ov Psychick Youth fame. You can agree or disagree with what Genesis says about the meaning of Darby Crash’s life, one that hit the LA punk scene like a lightning bolt, but you can’t deny that the quote packs a powerful punch to finish this biography off.

There isn’t much to criticize in Lexicon Devil. It’s a thoroughly researched and detailed portrait of a young man, a time, a place, and a counter-cultural music scene. In the end, your appreciation will simply rest on how you feel about Darby Crash and punk in general. If this music and lifestyle are too abrasive for you, you will probably hate this book no matter how perfectly executed Brendan Mullen’s project is. And if you really must know what the inner life of Darby Crash felt like, and the reason so many punks were drawn to the Germs, I recommend you get a copy of their album GI and play the song “We Must Blled”. Play it at high volume. Play it over and over and over again. It’s an absolute nightmare and when Darby Crash, with his raspy snarling voice, sings over and over again “I want out now” you’ll know what kind of pain he was feeling.

 

Book Review

Serpico:

The Cop Who Defied the System

by Peter Maas

     

     Most Americans want to like the police. It’s just that so many of us have had bad experiences with them and that makes it difficult. If you grow up in a city, especially one with a moderate or high crime rate, you will learn not to trust the cops from a young age. For most of us, it starts in our teenage years. It’s even worse if you aren’t white or dress somewhat unconventionally. Yes we’ve all heard it said that not all police are bad and it’s unfair that a few bad ones tarnish the reputation of the whole institution. We all know that’s true. That line of reasoning doesn’t go so far when you get harassed, surveilled, and bullied on a weekly basis by the jerks in blue when you aren’t doing anything worse than walking to the corner grocery store or going to school. All that is just surface level annoyance though. There are deep problems with corruption in polic forces all across the country; NYPD is especially notorious for playing dirty, taking graft for allowing gambling, prostitution, drug dealing, and all kinds of crime. This isn’t something the media made up; any New Yorker will tell you it’s real and many of them know from experience.

Then a man like Frank Serpico comes along and tries to blow the whole rotten pustule open for all to see, but in his case, the little that got seen did nothing to stop the rot which was feeding on all levels of the law enforcement system. Peter Maas’s Serpico: The Cop Who Defied the System gives the full run down on this singularly courageous man who tried to fix what had gone wrong. Written like a novel, it is a compelling biography that succeeds because he makes the protagonist a character that is easy to relate to.

Frank Serpico, like so many other great Americans, was the son of immigrants. His family were hard-working Neapolitans who came over from Italy. As a boy he developed a precocious interest in guns and a fascination for police which was partly influenced by their heroic portrayals in the movies and television. He also loved reading and developed an intellectual side that is rare among people who seek employment as police officers, most of which tend to be blue collar with low levels of education.

When Serpico realized his dream of becoming a cop, he exceeded in his duty, courageously making arrests that other policemen were too lazy or scared to get involved with. He immediately became an outsider on the force, not only because of his desire to be the best, but also because he started to see all the corruption; his partners routinely accepted bribes and many of them found places to sleep when they should have been out patrolling the streets. Even worse, Serpico grew a beard and long hair and began looking a little too bohemian for the other cops who thought he was gay or else some kind of hippie radical.

After being transferred to different departments, the corruption got even worse. He realized that the NYPD were actively working with criminals and encouraging crime for the sake of taking bribes. Many of these cops even chose their jobs for that reason alone. This was nothing new; the number of men seeking employment as cops during the Prohibition era spiked for the exact same reason, for example. When Serpico tried to fight the corruption by taking his case to the highest levels of the police department, he was met with nothing but cold shoulders. He eventually took his story to the media and testified in court on the issue of police corruption, but very little was done to stop the problem. Then during a drug bust gone wrong, he got shot in the face. Although he survived, there were sympathy cards he received in the mail from members of the police force who said they wished he had died.

This is a very accessible and visually stimulating book. What really works though is the way the author makes you feel Serpico’s frustrations and disappointment. You know from the start that Serpico will lose but the writing style really brings you close to his emotions and states of mind. The downside of this descriptive writing is that at times Peter Maas veers into purple prose with excessive use of adjectives that becomes slightly annoying. And while the anecdotes about Serpico’s early years as a cop are true, Maas writes about him as if he is a superhero, larger than life and a little cartoonish as he fights for truth, justice, and the American way. It comes off as too good to be true, even though those stories are true. Fortunately, these weaker parts of the writing are at the beginning of the story and don’t continue all the way through.

Serpico is a great book. In fact it was so great that it got made into a classic movie starring Al Pacino around the peak of his career in the 1970s, which is one hell of a credential. The book is somewhat better because Peter Maas makes Serpico so easy to relate to. If you have ever had big dreams of doing something great and then getting disillusioned after you got there, this biography will strike a cord with you. You don’t have to be an honest police officer to relate to Frank Serpico. I myself have been a teacher for twenty years and my experiences with the educational system have been similar to what he went through. I reached a point where I no longer want to have anything to do with such a dirty business. Frank Serpico’s dream was to work for a police force in which the bad cops feared the good cops and what he found was something the opposite way around. He failed in his mission but that fact that he tried is enough to restore a dash of faith in humanity. At least there are some people out there who want things to be right. Frank Serpico was heroic and that is why his story deserves to be remembered.