Mexico rebel leader meets poor Indians

Mexico City: Zapatista rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos abandoned his horse and rifle for a motorcycle and sat down to listen to the dispossessed urban Indians and migrant workers as part of his new quest to build a national leftist movement.

Marcos, who retained his trademark ski mask, was accompanied by a caravan of minivans and pickup trucks at the University of the Earth, a school for Indians in a dirt-road slum on the outskirts of San Cristobal.

There, he listened to the woes of common Mexicans like Cesar Soriano, who works in Los Angeles but came back to Mexico for the event.

Discrimination

"In Los Angeles, we live in the shadow of Disneyland," Soriano told the gathering of more than 300 people at the university. "But as immigrants we have to struggle against discrimination in a foreign land."

Accompanied by a dozen mask-wearing companions, Marcos met on Monday with non-governmental groups and neighbourhood leaders representing poor Indians, including thousands who were forced out of their homes in the nearby city of San Juan Chamula for being evangelical Protestants in a heavily Roman Catholic area.

Six-month tour

"We will listen to everybody," he told a crowd of more than 300 people who gathered at the university. "We are not a government or a political party or, the worst thing in the world, a house of lawmakers."

Marcos on Sunday launched a six-month tour of the country's 31 states, promising to form a new national leftist movement that will "turn Mexico on its head" a mission he timed to coincide with the 2006 presidential campaign.

He is making the trip on a black motorcycle nicknamed "Shadow Light," drawing some comparisons to the socially oriented trip of Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara in the 1950s.