Zapatista Marcos Responds to Pena Nieto's Hunger Crusade, 'We Don't Want Your Handouts' Jose Gil Olmos - Proceso
go to original January 23, 2013

Hours after the ceremony headed by President Enrique Peña Nieto and Secretary of Social Development, Rosario Robles, in which they presented the Crusade Against Hunger, to fight poverty in Chiapas, Subcomandante Marcos, of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, issued a new statement in which he warns that "alms" must be granted elsewhere.

The federal government had chosen the municipality of Las Margaritas, where in 1994 the Zapatista National Liberation Army appeared with its declaration of war against the Mexican government then led by Carlos Salinas de Gortari. In response, the guerrilla leader ridiculed the ceremony attended by 30 governors and cabinet members.

He began by addressing the government attendees as "Ali Baba and his 40 thieves" and then criticized the government's transporting thousands of peasants and indigenous to fill the audience.

He also criticized the mistakes made by Peña Nieto and Rosario Robles in reading their speeches and recalls, in a sarcastic tone, the Solidarity program that President Carlos Salinas led in 1993, promising to end inequality.

He recalls that in that year Salinas, leading the Solidarity program, also visited the same municipality of Las Margaritas to inaugurate a hospital in the Tojolabal [indigenous Maya] community of Guadalupe Tepeyac that never functioned as promised, and in 1994 that village became one of the most important enclaves of the EZLN.

"Poor choreography and poor coordination. The applause of those brought in was completely out of rhythm.... Remember that the important thing is the form (or is it vice versa?). Hmm ... and then there was the stuttering and the errors in the use of the plural, the singular, the masculine and the feminine," he mocks.

He continues:

"The truth is, I was hoping to hear the theme song of the telethon [a national fund raising for handicapped children sponsored by Televisa], and that the respectable ones would take out their lighters and wave them, and those on the diaz would clap their hands and everyone would swing to the rhythm of 'S-O-L-I-D-A-R-I-T-Y'."

A suggestion: you have to offer the handouts elsewhere. No Jesus lives here, not Jesus Ortega Martinez [one-time president of PRD] or Jesus Zambrano [current president of PRD]. Or you can give them out through the 'Pact for Mexico'. (Ah, aren't my puns sublime?).

Read Spanish original

Posted by Reed Brundage at Mexico Voices

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