Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nick Henck is Visiting Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at Keio University in Tokyo.

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"In this encyclopedic biography, Nick Henck draws on almost everything ever published on Subcommander Marcos. The result is an analysis that first highlights Marcos's intellectual and political formation prior to his entering the Lacandon jungle in late 1983, and then illuminates the Subcommander's unique cultural and political flexibility, which ultimately served to let the EZLN be directed by the priorities of the indigenous communities of Chiapas. As Henck points out, this flexibility is what distinguished Marcos from other twentieth-century guerrilla leaders; it was pivotal in permitting the EZLN to play a central role in the democratization of Mexico after seventy years of one-party rule. This is a valuable reference book for all those interested in a detailed account of the rise of Subcommander Marcos and the EZLN in Chiapas."--Lynn Stephen, author of "Transborder Lives: Indigenous Oaxacans in Mexico, California, and Oregon"

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SUBCOMMANDER MARCOS

Duke University Press

Contents

Illustrations.............................................................xiAcknowledgments...........................................................xiiiAbbreviations and Acronyms................................................xvCast of Main Characters...................................................xixIntroduction..............................................................11. Birth and Family.......................................................132. School Years...........................................................203. High School College....................................................234. UNAM...................................................................295. The Graduate...........................................................426. Chiapas................................................................577. Guerrilla Inception....................................................658. The Wilderness Years...................................................769. First Contact..........................................................8210. Promotion and Expansion...............................................8811. A Jungle Wedding......................................................10712. An Election, Exponential Growth, and a Rift...........................11213. Bust and Boom.........................................................12414. Fallout...............................................................12915. From the People's Guerrilla to a Guerrilla People.....................13316. Indigenous Indignation................................................14317. An Internal Coup and the Road to War..................................16318. The Uprising..........................................................19519. "Waging a Masterful Media War"........................................21320. A Cease-Fire..........................................................22121. The Cult of Marcos....................................................22622. Peace Talks...........................................................24723. Courting Civil Society................................................25324. The Elections and Their Aftermath.....................................26225. Marcos Unmasked and Rafael Revealed...................................27826. Nationalizing and Internationalizing the Struggle.....................30127. A March and a Massacre................................................31528. Speedy Gonzalez Breaks the Silence....................................32129. A Consulta, a Story, and a Strike.....................................33030. A Change of Government................................................33631. The Zapatour..........................................................34232. Marcos Today..........................................................353Conclusion................................................................361Notes.....................................................................369Glossary..................................................................467Works Cited...............................................................469Index.....................................................................487

Chapter One

Rafael Sebastin Guilln Vicente was born in Tampico on 19 June 1957 into a family that neighbors have described as "part of [Tampico] society though not high society." Tampico is in the state of Tamaulipas-famous for its seafood and its cyclones-on the Gulf of Mexico. In the 1950s it was a bustling tropical port; in the early part of the twentieth century it had been the busiest oil port in the world. In hindsight it seems ironic that in the 1930s government money had been diverted away from public building projects (such as reservoirs) in Chiapas and toward Tampico: the consequential stunting of Chiapas's development would provide Rafael, a middle-class scion of the beneficiary city, with a setting and support base for his career as a revolutionary.

Rafael's date of birth is highly significant, coinciding with the emergence of left-wing guerrilla insurgency based on the foco. The year 1957 saw Che Guevara and Fidel and Raul Castro fighting their way through the Sierra Maestra toward Havana in neighboring Cuba. (They had arrived on Cuban soil on 2 December 1956, having sailed from Tuxpn, only 94 miles [151 km] down the coast from Tampico.) One month after Rafael's birth, on 21 July, Guevara became the first combatant to be promoted to comandante and was given command of the second column (called Column 4 in order to confuse the enemy). Rafael's most impressionable years (ten to eighteen) witnessed the death of Guevara (October 1967); the year of revolution (1968), including the Paris student uprising and the massacre of students in Mexico City at Tlatelolco (2 October 1968); and the severe repression unleashed by the Echeverra government against left-wing militant groups (the early and mid-1970s). It is not hard to imagine the impact of such events on the media and thus, consequently, on a politically minded family. Marcos states that as a family, "We learnt to read, not so much in school, as in the columns of newspapers." These happenings probably resulted in Rafael's first exposure to and participation in intense political discussion. Such family debate must have formed a lasting impression on him. Significantly, in the immediate aftermath of Tlatelolco, the student leader Eduardo Valle prophesied:

I think the Movement will have its effect on the children.... In generations that lived it ... seeing their older brothers move ... into action, hearing stories of the days of terror, feeling them in their blood ... the government of this country will have to be very wary of those who were ten or fifteen in 1968 ... they will always remember the assaults upon, the murders of their brothers.

Rafael, at that time aged eleven, proved to be just such a child, going on later to fulfill this prophecy by becoming the greatest thorn in the sides of the Salinas and Zedillo governments.

The impact of Tlatelolco on Rafael is made explicit in Marcos's communiqu Tlatelolco: Thirty Years Later the Struggle Continues, dated 2 October 1998 and addressed "to the Generation of Dignity of 1968." It was written to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the massacre, and, in addition to saluting those who died or felt the pain of 1968 and demanding "that the whole truth be told, that yesterday's and today's crimes no longer go unpunished," Marcos lays claim to being part of the same tradition as those who rebelled in 1968, the tradition of resistance. While admitting that the Zapatistas are "different and distinct" from those who resisted thirty years previously, the enemy is portrayed as the same, with the free-standing line "1968.1998," designed to highlight the fact that nothing had changed, comprising four of the final fifteen lines of the communiqu. Further evidence of the impact of Tlatelolco on Rafael can be seen in a February 1994 interview with La Jornada correspondents. The journalists asked him, "Generationally speaking, are you a product of '68?" Marcos replied: "I'm definitely post-'68, but not the core of '68 ... I was a little kid. But I do come from everything that followed, especially the electoral frauds, the most scandalous one in 1988, but others as well."

Ten days after the student...