Mexico’s Marcos Marches to a Crossroad

Mexico’s masked guerrilla leader, Subcommander Marcos, was the perfect guerrilla for Mexico’s perfect dictatorship. He shed new light on old grievances. He forced Mexico to look at its Indians after decades of glancing away. He donned a mask and uncovered repressive practices and authoritarian attitudes.

Now, however, he runs the risk of becoming irrelevant, anachronistic, outdated. Even though Marcos may not believe it, Mexico has changed. Not only has the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, been forced out of the presidential chair, but society itself has undergone a profound metamorphosis. Before Mexico’s watershed presidential election, millions applauded the legitimacy of an armed rebellion. Today, millions question its persistence. As recent polls reveal, Mexicans prefer a dignified peace to an interminable impasse.

“We want to stop being who we are,” Marcos said recently. “We want to show our faces.” As the Zapatista caravan winds its way through the country, many anxiously await the moment of truth. They want to know whether Marcos’ mask hides a democrat or a dictator, a true leader or a false prophet.

Prospects for peace in Chiapas don’t depend exclusively on President Vicente Fox’s political will or lack thereof. The resolution of Chiapas’ seven-year conflict with the Zapatista National Liberation Army, or EZLN, also rests on what Marcos decides about his own destiny.

Marcos must abandon messianic martyrdom and display political pragmatism. He must trade letter-writing on the Internet for lobbying in Congress. Marcos must decide whether he will join a political party or be a novelist or a film star or a talk show host or a human rights advocate or a stay-at-home dad.

Marcos probably thinks that these are lesser roles for someone of his stature. But Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa chose compromise after confrontation. Through their anti-system attitude they built a new world, and then they decided to become its inhabitants. They discovered that grandiose social revolutions depend on small individual contributions. Instead of dying as heroes, they reinvented themselves as politicians. Instead of constructing castles in the sky, they built democracies here on Earth. Marcos will have to tread the same path and substitute words of wisdom with practical proposals.

Negotiations between the government and the EZLN will only take place when Marcos has an exit strategy. His dilemma is not a minor one. His personal crossroad reflects the political crux of the Mexican left.

Neither Marcos nor any of Mexico’s leftist leaders knows if the best way to resurrect their waning fortunes is by opposing or collaborating with the Fox government. They don’t know if they should keep decrying “the system” or recognize that it has changed. They don’t know whether to grudgingly accept Mexico’s imperfect democracy or argue that it still hasn’t arrived.

Marcos is right to march to Mexico City. Marcos is right to denounce racism and decry discrimination. Marcos should demand that Mexico recognize its Indians as citizens and treat them as such. Marcos should push for constitutional reforms that grant Indians autonomy and offer them retribution.

But sooner or later, he will have to look at himself in the mirror, take off his mask and participate openly in normal politics.

Marcos has asked Fox three questions: Is he committed to peace? Is he in charge? Is he seriously willing to negotiate? The same questions apply to Marcos, and he will be able to answer them only when he decides who he wants to be when he grows up. When he does and his answer to all three questions is “yes,” peace in Chiapas will be within his grasp and Mexico’s.