Rebels Mark Uprising With Jungle Fiesta : Mexico: The Zapatistas restate commitment to fight for democracy and equal rights--but through dialogue, not bullets.

The music was off-key, the dancing and military maneuvers out of step, but the rhetoric was angry and stern as the Indian rebels celebrated the first anniversary of their New Year’s Day uprising early Sunday with a midnight fiesta in the jungle and a call for a national struggle to drive Mexico’s ruling party from power.

One year after hundreds of armed rebels of the Zapatista National Liberation Army began seizing key cities and towns throughout the southern state of Chiapas, the Zapatistas gathered during the night in their Lacandon rain-forest stronghold to dance, sing and restate their commitment to fight for democracy and equal rights--but this time through dialogue, not bullets.

“Our struggle is national,” rebel leader Subcommander Marcos declared in an hourlong, tape-recorded statement that arrived in a purple envelope just after midnight at the anniversary fiesta, known as a cumbia.

His statement punctuated by music in a radio-show format that Marcos called “Insurgent Radio,” the guerrilla leader stressed that the Zapatistas will talk rather than fight but that his movement will push a national agenda for radical political and economic change during upcoming talks with the government. Marcos had issued a communique late last week declaring a unilateral cease-fire from New Year’s Day through Friday.

“We Zapatistas are prepared to offer up the only thing we have--our lives--to demand democracy, freedom and justice for all Mexicans,” Marcos said. The rebels’ January, 1994, uprising triggered a shooting war with the Mexican army that left nearly 150 people dead over 12 days.

As a crowd of about 1,000 onlookers and 250 armed guerrillas hung on every word, Marcos outlined an agenda that called for a broad-based, nonviolent resistance movement against the Institutional Revolutionary Party that has governed Mexico for 66 years.

Using revolutionary rhetoric typical of the masked, pipe-smoking Zapatista leader, Marcos demanded that the ruling party be “liquidated” and that the month-old government of President Ernesto Zedillo make a sweeping reform of electoral laws “to ensure true equality,” totally restructure its economic plan and create an assembly to write a new constitution that will protect the rights of indigenous Mexicans.

Zedillo, whose strategy of offering concessions to the Zapatistas while deploying a huge military force near their jungle stronghold brought the rebels back to the bargaining table last month, offered no response Sunday to Marcos’ statement.

But the president, who inherited an economic crisis along with the simmering Zapatista rebellion when he took office Dec. 1, is scheduled to address the nation today.

Reflecting on a year that included two major political assassinations that plunged the ruling party into its worst crisis in decades, many in the crowd at the Zapatista anniversary party said they believe the rebels finished the year better off than most of the political leaders the guerrillas see as their ultimate enemy.

The fighter who organized the fiesta, who gave her name as Captain Maribel, said flatly, “This has been a very good year for the Zapatistas.” Maribel, wearing the Zapatistas’ trademark ski mask, recalled where she was one year ago that minute--advancing toward the Chiapas town of Las Margaritas, where she led 30 rebels in an attack that commandeered the local radio station.

“There have been many advances,” she said in between dances early Sunday. “And we’ve seen that the people of Mexico are behind us.”

Special correspondent Simon reported from Aguascalientes, staff writer Fineman from Mexico City.