Mexico City — Fulfilling a vow in their declaration of war seven years ago, Mexico's masked Zapatista rebels led a march Sunday into the heart of Mexico City to press their demands for Indian rights.
Winding up a two-week tour of southern Mexico, the Zapatista leaders became the first rebel group to openly ride into the city since revolutionary leaders Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata the rebels' namesake did it in 1914.
Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos raises an Indian ceremonial baton in the air Sunday after arriving to Mexico City's main Zocalo plaza. A caravan of 23 Zapatisa commanders and hundreds of followers were enthusiastically recieved by tens of thousands of supporters in the plaza.
The 23 rebel commanders and their military leader, Subcomandante Marcos, rode a flatbed truck into the city's main plaza, to chants of "You are not alone" from an estimated 75,000 cheering supporters. They had come to press their demand for approval of an Indian rights law currently before congress.
"Once again, the federal government and congress have a chance to choose between peace with dignity and justice, or war against the indigenous peoples," said rebel leader Comandante David.
Marcos made a poetic appeal for a multiethnic Mexico, and criticized President Vicente Fox, who has gone further than any of his predecessors to meet the Zapatistas' demands.
"I'm sure the guy who works in the office behind me is applauding wildly," Marcos said, referring to the National Palace, which dominates one side of the plaza. "It's time for Fox to see us, to listen ... to one thing: constitutional recognition for Indian rights and culture."
Marcos said the Zapatistas were a different brand of rebels; like the original army of peasants led by Zapata, "we do not aspire to hold power," Marcos said.
Rebel leader Comandante Esther was more direct in attacking Fox's promises to give Mexicans a better standard of living.
"We don't want a little business, a compact car and a television," Esther said, repeating one of Fox's frequent phrase. "We want recognition of our rights."
Both Fox and the Zapatista National Liberation Army have staked prestige on the event. The rebels hope to win support as a political force. Fox hopes that will help him achieve what two previous presidents failed to do: Convince the rebels to abandon their guns.
Their entrance to Mexico City was not quite as the rebels envisioned it when they shocked the world by emerging from obscurity to seize several cities in the southern state of Chiapas on Jan. 1, 1994, the very day Mexican officials were celebrating enactment the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Instead of "conquering the Mexican federal army," the goal they set in their declaration of war, the Zapatistas have found themselves touring the country in a bus caravan protected by federal police.
Instead of "liberated" Mexican civilians, they find themselves accompanied by hundreds of foreign supporters who see the Zapatistas as exemplars of the struggle against the global financial system.
The "evil government" against which they rebelled was toppled last year: not by armed leftist insurgents but peacefully, at the polls, by Fox, a former Coca-Cola executive whose pro-market leanings the leftist rebels deeply distrust.
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