Twenty Years Later, Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos is Less Relevant Than Ever Avedis Hadjian - IBTimes.com
go to original November 16, 2013

A masked man acts as a minder for foreign visitors to Oventik. (Avedis Hadjian/IBTimes)

Twenty years after it started with a big bang and spectacular visuals - Subcomandante Marcos, his face hidden behind a balaclava, smoking a pipe and riding a white stallion, and posters depicting the iconic Virgin of Guadalupe with her mouth covered by the Zapatistas’ red bandana - the uprising is now for most people a distant memory.

Faded red stars painted on walls along the roads in Chiapas are a fitting symbol for the twilight of the revolution.

Signs announcing, with intended menace, “You are entering Zapatista territory: Here the people rule and the government obeys” scare nobody, and people drive past them with the indifference of the chickens often seen milling around on the shoulder of the highway.

... In the same way that birds may be the direct descendants of dinosaurs, shrunk to survive on a planet with much less to eat and much more competition, the Zapatistas have adapted to a world grown more inhospitable to utopian movements.

Read the rest at IBTimes.com

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