Subcomandante Marcos

Subcomandante Marcos (born June 19, 1957, Tampico, Mexico) is a Mexican professor who was the leader of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional; EZLN, also called the Zapatistas), which launched a rebellion in 1994 in the state of Chiapas and later functioned as a political movement defending the rights of Mexico’s indigenous peoples. Marcos’s leadership of the EZLN made him an international rebel icon, and he also became a widely read author not only of political writings but also of novels and poetry.

Rafael Guillén Vicente, the man whom Mexican Pres. Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León declared in 1995 to be Subcomandante Marcos, was the Jesuit-trained son of the owner of a furniture chain in Tampico. After attending school in Tampico and Monterrey, Guillén earned two degrees from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; UNAM). In 1981 he was one of five students from the university’s department of philosophy and letters to receive a national medal of excellence from Pres. José López Portillo. He taught aesthetics part-time at a working-class school, known as a left-wing activist centre, before resigning in 1984. It is believed that soon afterward Guillén moved to the mountains of Chiapas to work with Mayan peasants.

Subcomandante Marcos made his first appearance on New Year’s Day, 1994, when he led an EZLN offensive in which the Zapatistas seized several towns in southern Chiapas state. As the rebellion continued, Marcos, one of the EZLN’s few non-Indian fighters, became known for his trademark black mask and pipe and for his communiqués, issued in the name of the Revolutionary Indigenous Clandestine Committee of the General Command of the EZLN. These letters to the Mexican people, which appeared in newspapers and on the Internet, often combined humour, poetry, and storytelling with sharp political critiques.

On February 9, 1995, President Zedillo ordered thousands of Mexican troops into the areas held by the EZLN. The stated purpose of the crackdown was to prevent further violence by capturing Zapatista leaders, in particular Marcos. As part of the effort, Zedillo identified Marcos as Guillén. Calling him a middle-class “maverick philosopher and university professor,” Zedillo attempted to discredit Marcos as the voice of the peasant-led EZLN and to strip him of the charismatic guerrilla mystique that had captured the imagination of many. Pictures of Guillén juxtaposed with those of the masked Marcos appeared worldwide. Meanwhile, as Marcos, the EZLN, and the population of many villages fled into the Lacandón jungle, more than 100,000 demonstrators in Mexico City and elsewhere answered Zedillo by proclaiming, “We are all Marcos.” While Zedillo proclaimed Marcos a terrorist, the UNAM awarded him an honorary degree.

By mid-March 1995 the troops had been pulled out of the area. Marcos continued to communicate via the Internet from the rainforest. In October he emerged to participate in peace talks with the Mexican government in San Andrés Larrainzar, doing so with his usual dramatic flair—on horseback with armed, masked Zapatistas to the sounds of conch shells blowing and a cheering crowd of peasants. Talks between the EZLN and the government continued into February 1996, when both parties signed what became known as the San Andrés Accords, which outlined a program of land reform, indigenous autonomy, and cultural rights. In December of that year, however, President Zedillo rejected the accords.

As clashes continued in Chiapas between Zapatistas and paramilitary forces in the 1990s, Marcos began to appear at political events and rallies, where he spoke on topics including human rights, international politics, and the Mayan peasant culture. His mantras against neoliberalism (policies promoting free-market trade) and globalization were popular with the world’s leftist groups.

In 2001 Marcos emerged from the jungle for the first time in years to lead a 15-day march from Chiapas to Mexico City. The feat, which became known as “Zapatour,” was meant to advocate political rights for the country’s indigenous population. In Mexico City he spoke in the main city plaza, the Zócalo, before hundreds of thousands of people, including several prominent politicians and celebrities. Immediately afterward he appeared before members of Congress to lobby for the implementation of the San Andrés Accords. On April 25, Congress approved a revised version of the accords, which the Zapatistas denounced.

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Marcos appeared again on January 1, 2006, this time under his new name, Delegate Zero, to embark on an EZLN initiative known as “The Other Campaign,” in which he led the Zapatistas on a six-month countrywide tour coinciding with the 2006 Mexican presidential race. Delegate Zero aimed to form a movement among other indigenous and resistance groups in the country and to create change outside the scope of electoral politics. On the road, Delegate Zero verbally criticized the presidential candidates of Mexico’s major political parties. After the election, Marcos sporadically emerged from hiding to make statements.

Marcos has never officially confirmed or denied being Guillén. Works published under Marcos’s name include The Other Campaign (2008), ¡Ya Basta! Ten Years of the Zapatista Uprising (2004), Our Word Is Our Weapon (2003), and Questions and Swords: Folktales of the Zapatista Revolution (2001), among other publications.