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Zapatistas leave jungle for Mexico to reshape presidential race
Zapatista rebels aboard rickety trucks and buses left their jungle strongholds for the first time in four years to launch a six-month tour of Mexico aimed at reshaping the nation's politics.
- AP
- Published: 00:00 January 3, 2006
Mexico: Zapatista rebels aboard rickety trucks and buses left their jungle strongholds for the first time in four years to launch a six-month tour of Mexico aimed at reshaping the nation's politics.
About 15,000 rebels and sympathisers, waving banners ranging from black and red anarchist flags to communist hammer and sickles, marched to a cathedral in the centre of the mountain city of San Cristobal de las Casas, the first stop on the nationwide tour.
Standing in front of a mural of Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata the rebel group's namesake the Indian rights movement's ski-masked spokesman Subcomandante Marcos and other Zapatista commanders gave speeches railing against the Mexican government and free trade.
The enemy "has many faces but one name: capitalism," Marcos said.
Marcos said the rest of the Zapatistas' tour would consist not of big marches, but of meetings with ordinary people. "We will listen to people in the places where they work, in the places where they are exploited, where they suffer racism," he said.
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