MEXICO: Zapatistas march for indigenous justice

Wednesday, February 28, 2001 - 11:00

BY DICK NICHOLS

MEXICO CITY — The leaders of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), headed by Subcomandante Marcos, are to emerge from Chiapas, the southernmost Mexican state where they led their famous 1994 uprising of the region's indigenous peoples.

The EZLN, which has held the region ever since and has been permanently harassed by the Mexican army despite the signing of peace accords, will send its 24 top comandantes, including Marcos, in a town-by-town march from San Cristobal de Chiapas to Mexico City, crossing 12 states along the way.

The comandantes will travel by bus, hold rallies for indigenous rights and also take part in the Third National Indigenous Congress, to be held in Nurio, in the state of Michoaca'n. They will wear their famous EZLN balaclavas, as a symbol of the continuing invisibility of the indigenous people in Mexican society and politics.

According to Edgard Sanchez, leader of the Mexican Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT) and former parliamentarian, the march — which is bound to be greeted by immense support — presents an invaluable opportunity to relaunch the fragmented Mexican left in the new situation created by the end of the 71-year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

" The defeat of the PRI so long sought by the left has, paradoxically, occurred on the electoral terrain with the installation of a clearly right-wing, pro-business government" of the National Action Party (PAN) of president Vicente Fox, Sanchez told Green Left Weekly.

"Faced with the aggressiveness of the right, election-oriented alternatives won't be enough. We need a new force based on the left in the social movements, the extra-parliamentary left, but also involving sectors of the parliamentary left like those present in the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which is in crisis after its thrashing in last year's presidential poll."

"The march of the EZLN, who can relate to these three elements, is a chance to relaunch the left that should not be missed," he stated.