Presidential Candidate Obrador Reaches Out to Zapatistas EFE
go to original April 5, 2012

Leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. (EFE)

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS - Leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wants support from the most prominent group on Mexico's extraparliamentary left, the Zapatistas, a movement made up largely of indigenous people.

"I want to make an appeal to those who, from oppression, authoritarianism and poverty, rose up in rebellion in 1994," Lopez Obrador said, referring to the Zapatistas' brief armed revolt in the impoverished southern state of Chiapas.

"I make an appeal to those who participate in this Zapatista movement to seek with us a way to work together, to reconcile and to try to improve the conditions of life in Chiapas and the whole country," he said in San Cristobal de las Casas, the state's cultural capital.

Addressing a rally in San Cristobal's main square, the candidate mentioned the late Catholic bishop who acted as mediator in initial talks between the Zapatistas and the Mexican government.

"I have in my memory that great bishop of Chiapas, Samuel Ruiz. That's why I'm stretching out my speech because I'm full of feelings on being here in this emblematic square of San Cristobal," he said in front of the cathedral.

The former Mexico City mayor pledged to work for the implementation of the San Andres Larrainzar Accords, which remain largely a dead letter 16 years after they were signed by Zapatistas and the government of then-President Ernesto Zedillo.

Though they never laid down arms, the Zapatistas ceased hostilities a few weeks after launching their rebellion in January 1994, partly at the urging of organizations such as Lopez Obrador's PRD party.

But the party and the erstwhile insurgents fell out in 2000, when PRD lawmakers voted against a Zapatista-backed bill to ensure the rights of Mexico's indigenous peoples.

In 2006, when Lopez Obrador was the early favorite in the presidential race, the Zapatistas dismissed the electoral process as irrelevant and mounted an alternative mobilization known as the "Other Campaign."

The Zapatistas' spokesman, Subcomandante Marcos, recently referred to Lopez Obrador as "one of the three rascals who will dispute the throne amid the rubble of Mexico" in the July 1 presidential contest.

Lopez Obrador is currently a distant third in the polls.

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