Subcomandante Marcos Essay

The Mission of Subcomandante Marcos
Who Was Subcomandante Marcos? Subcomandante Marcos was a contemporary Mexican revolutionary leader, active during the 1990s and early 2000s. Marcos was the leader of the Zapatista guerrilla movement in the state of Chiapas, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). The main uprising of the EZLN was in 1994, against the Mexican government and was aimed at forming an alternative government that would represent the exploited indigenous Zapatismo people. By beginning their rebellion on January 1, 1994, the day that the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect, the EZLN called the world’s attention to their protest of the signing of NAFTA. The EZLN was anti neoliberalism, because they felt

This earned the Zapatistas enemies, and violence from the government. Naomi Klein’s “Zapatista Code Red” describes this aggression from the Mexican government as undermining the Zapatistas by buying their land and giving it to families linked to the notoriously corrupt Institutional Revolutionary Party. These new owners of the land are linked to thuggish paramilitary groups and violence is surging in Chiapas. Marcos brought some damage to the Zapatista people by enraging the Mexican government by leading this “Other Campaign.”

“The Fourth World War Has Begun”
In his 1997 essay “The Fourth World War Has Begun,” Marcos speaks of a new kind of war where globalization takes over the world not only through material destruction, but through historical and cultural destruction. Marcos considers the Cold War misnamed, and that it should be named the Third World War, in which socialism was the loser and capitalism the victor. Marcos says the bomb of World War Four is not nuclear like that of

His aim for an alternative government option was never successful. In Enrique Krauze’s “The View From La Realidad,” Krauze discusses how realistic Marcos’ hopes were. La Realidad is the name Marcos had given to the small village where his headquarters was. Krauze says that “La Realidad is not the same thing as reality” (Krauze, 32). Recalling the concept of creating a new world that Marcos describes in his essay “The Fourth World War Has Begun,” this new world is what Marcos referred to with the name La Realidad. Changing the outlook of every individual in the world in order to create a new one is impossible and not realistic. While it is an admirable moral standpoint, what does it mean practically? Krauze supposes that Marcos’ accomplishment “is to have transformed identity politics into a revolutionary program” (Krauze, 32). Marcos has successfully stood behind the indigenous people and created a revolution. This in itself is a feat, even though the goal of the revolution itself is unattainable. There is irony in Marcos’ mission because while it begs for transformation and change, the people themselves will stay the same. Krauze says “He wants his people to be saved but to stay the same, to experience a transformation without being transformed” (Krauze, 32). This concept is like calling for a reverse progression, stepping back in time rather than moving forward. It seems Marcos would