By JAN McGIRK Herald correspondent
MEXICO CITY - Subcomandante Marcos, leader of Mexico's Zapatista guerrillas, has broken a year's silence and agreed to restart peace talks to end a festering peasant revolt in Chiapas state.
With a pipe stuck through the mouth-hole of his black balaclava and smoke curling overhead, the charismatic rebel said at the weekend that Vicente Fox, the only Opposition candidate elected to Mexico's presidency in 71 years, must first meet his demands.
Before he will emerge from the jungle to face Government negotiators in the capital, he insists that Fox order the evacuation of seven Army bases, free all Zapatistas jailed since the 1994 rising and sign an Indian Bill of Rights to protect the marginalised Maya tribes from exploitation.
In an 80-minute speech to hundreds of journalists summoned to a jungle clearing near the Guatemalan border, he seemed wary of Fox and the big business interests backing him, but willing to give peace a chance.
"Mr Fox, if you choose the way of respectful, serious and sincere dialogue, show your willingness with deeds," said Marcos, wearing fatigues and carrying a rifle.
The elusive rebel's appearance in public for the first time in a year is the most dramatic signal so far that genuine changes may follow Fox's swearing-in. On campaign, the conservative candidate boasted that, unlike the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, he could find an accord with the Zapatistas "in about 15 minutes." Peace with the rebels has since become one of his National Action Party's priorities.
At his inauguration, he promised that his first proposal to Congress this week would be an Indian rights bill, as demanded by the Zapatistas. He also ordered the Army to pull back from roadblocks and encampments near all rebel strongholds in Chiapas.
The Zapatistas burst out of the jungle in January 1994 with a spate of violence that cost 145 lives in a fortnight. Their leader, the poetry-spouting Marcos, disdained military posturing and preferred to keep his rank at the level of subcomandante. Although no Maya peasant, he mobilised villagers to resist land-grabbing and human rights abuses.
His guerrillas are vastly outnumbered and regularly menaced by paramilitaries, who inflict terrible retribution on their peasant supporters. But Zapatista words are winning the fight for hearts and minds.
Early on, Marcos captured the imagination of international leftists with propaganda and his poetry, which was circulated on the internet. He mocked imperialist oppressors with aplomb, using the Warner Brothers cartoon character Speedy Gonzales as a mascot on his website. The rodent was kitted out with balaclava and pipe, just like Marcos.
Now, Maya children can be seen on market days hawking homemade rag dolls of guerrillas to the Western backpackers who flock to the picturesque Chiapas village of San Cristobal de las Casas to be near the Zapatista hideouts.
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