Subcomandante Marcos (1957 - )

Wed Jun 19, 1957

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Image: Subcomandante Marcos smoking a pipe atop a horse in Chiapas, Mexico, 1996. Photo by Jose Villa. [Wikipedia]

Rafael Vicente, also known as “Subcomandante Marcos”, is a Mexican insurgent, former military leader, and spokesman for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) who was born on this day in 1957. Before joining the EZLN, Vicente was a college professor at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico.

The EZLN was founded in the Lacandon Jungle in 1983, initially functioning as a self-defense unit dedicated to protecting Chiapas’ Mayan people from evictions and capitalist encroachment on their land. While not Mayan himself, Marcos has often served as the group’s spokesman.

Marcos led the EZLN during the 1994 revolt and the subsequent peace negotiations, during a counter-offensive by the Mexican Army in 1995, and throughout the decades that followed. In 2001, he led a group of Zapatista leaders into Mexico City to meet with President Vicente Fox, attracting widespread public and media attention.

“In the cabaret of globalization, the state shows itself as a table dancer that strips off everything until it is left with only the minimum indispensable garments: the repressive force.”

- Subcomandante Marcos