Giordano: Marcos' Six Month Tour of Mexico

The details of the "Other Campaign" - of the new direction that the Zapatista Army of National Liberation is taking in order to break out of Chiapas and join with different struggles around the Mexican republic - are out. Subcomandante Marcos, alone, unarmed, will undertake a massive tour of the country to meet ordinary Mexicans and plan together for the future.

Al Giordano reports from Chiapas, where he has just attended the first plenary session for the Other Campaign:

"After 22 years living clandestinely in Mexico's southernmost and poorest state of Chiapas, Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos is coming out to the rest of the country: Unarmed and alone, he will visit all 31 Mexican states and the Federal District of Mexico City. His six- month investigative mission - "to listen to the simple and humble people who struggle" - begins on January 1, 2006.

"Marcos came out just once before - during the 2001 Zapatista Caravan, together with 23 masked guerrilla commanders - but anyone who is expecting the kind of media circus and parade behind him that characterized that pilgrimage ("NASCAR with buses," wrote our correspondent Reber Boult at the time) is probably mistaken. According to Marcos' recent statements, there will not be speeches from stages or grand demonstration podiums, as there were in 2001 or in the 1997 caravan by 1,111 of his comrades. He is not coming out to speak. He is, rather, coming out to chart the terrain for other rebel organizers to follow, to discover who and what awaits them throughout the Mexican Republic, in a painstakingly careful and slow process of collecting information, of scouting the terrain for a long-term radical transformation of a nation.

"Anyone seeking an historical parallel to what comes next may wish to look at Mohandas K. Gandhi's return to India on January 9, 1915..."

Read the full report, here, in The Narco News Bulletin:

http://www.narconews.com/Issue39/article1454.html

From somewhere in a country called América,

Dan Feder
Managing Editor
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com

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