3/30/2007: Article extracted from the "People's Weekly World",
America's Communist Party News, via "New Zeal", New Zealands news
outlet: Morning Daily Brief: Serious situation developing in Mexico
that has no MSM coverage. Be Aware! ( FalconsLair )

Marxists Split, But Confident of Sucess: Zapatista's Vow To Remake
Mexico:

Start:
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation Army (EZLN) has vowed to
continue its campaign to change Mexico's political and economic
system.

The Zapatistas, as part of a larger movement known as "The Other
Campaign," say that they will renew their efforts to organize "a civil
and pacifist insurrection" across Mexico to transform the country's
political and economic system. The Other Campaign is a loose coalition
of individuals and groups that includes the Party of Mexican
Communists, one of the country's left-wing parties.

The primary goals of The Other Campaign are to abolish capitalism,
which it says has led to widespread poverty, and to dismantle the
country's repressive political system. According to EZLN leader
Subcomandante Marcos, in a recent interview posted on the web site
Radio Zapatista, while armed struggle to change the economic and
political system is still an option, The Other Campaign has ruled this
out. He predicted that the Zapatista-led campaign could succeed in
transforming Mexico before 2010.

Zapatista commanders, including Marcos, have launched a new tour of
Mexico to build opposition to the government of President Felipe
Calderon. The EZLN is also initiating a solidarity campaign, in Mexico
and worldwide, with the indigenous communities in Chiapas, an
impoverished state in the country's southeast.

Marcos said, "We [the EZLN] do not want to take power and from there
decide the transformation of society." He said the Zapatistas reject
the traditional Mexican and Latin American revolutionary model of
popular movements overthrowing repressive states, taking power and
then "imposing another tyranny." The EZLN only wants to initiate a
grassroots movement to overthrow the existing order, he said.

Unlike other left-wing guerilla groups in Latin America, such as FARC
(Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia), the EZLN and The Other
Campaign operate openly with little apparent fear of arrest. The
masked, pipe-smoking Marcos and other masked Zapatista commanders
travel across Mexico, speaking openly at public meetings. EZLN
supporters set up information tables in open-air markets to distribute
campaign material and sell Zapatista memorabilia.

After Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's center-left movement, The Other
Campaign is the second largest opposition group working for change in
Mexico. However, both movements are bitterly opposed to each other.

During the 2006 election campaign, Subcomandante Marcos toured the
country urging people not to vote for either the National Action Party
(PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) or Lopez Obrador's
coalition For the Good of All (now called the Broad Progressive
Front). Marcos charged that Lopez Obrador and his coalition, if
elected, would pursue the same right-wing policies implemented by PAN
and PRI.

As a result, a bitter rift has emerged between supporters of the EZLN
and Lopez Obrador, some of whom charge that Marcos helped PAN and PRI
secure more votes by encouraging people who might have been inclined
to vote for the left to abstain from voting. Given the history of
election rigging in Mexico, The Other Campaign refuses to take part in
electoral politics.

The EZLN first emerged on the world stage in 1994 from the jungles of
Chiapas in an uprising aimed at rectifying injustices suffered by the
indigenous people, fighting the Mexican army to a standstill. The
military maintains a cordon around Zapatista-controlled territory in
eastern Chiapas, where 100,000 indigenous people reside. Zapatista-
controlled local governments run the region.

Since 1994, there has been no further fighting. Recently, the EZLN
charged that paramilitary forces are encroaching on Zapatista
territory and trying to drive farmers off lands seized by Zapatistas
13 years ago. The EZLN announced it will resist the paramilitaries
with force if necessary.

The EZLN, named after Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata
(1879-1919), represents a long tradition in Mexico of people taking up
arms to overthrow the government. Other smaller guerilla movements
such as the Popular Revolutionary Army continue to operate in states
such as Guerro. The Other Campaign came out of a Zapatista-organized
conference in Chiapas in June 2005. END