The silence of Captain Marcos

The captain no longer gives orders. He doesn't want to be seen too much. Neither does public speaking. Maybe he's a little weak because he wasn't a captain before. He was deputy commander. Subcommander Marcos—the His p', for friends-. Then he changed his war nickname to Galeano, but he was still deputy commander. Not now, he has degraded himself, or has been degraded. At least he has been able to get his name back. The fact is that the most famous guerrilla in history—with Che's permission—is no longer the visible face of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). Or at least that's what he tries to do, because no matter how much he insists that he is no longer in charge, people don't care. The guy with the balaclava and the smoking pipe continues to attract everyone's attention. He is the left's last living rock star. Which at this point—the death of ideologies, savage capitalism and all that—perhaps is not saying much.

The insurgent captain Marcos – that is what he is now called with his first and last name – has been seen again, after a long time without doing so, on the 30th anniversary of the uprising of January 1, 1994, in the “Caracol Resistencia y Rebeldía: A Nuevo Horizonte”, in the town of Dolores Hidalgo. In the green and hazy vertigo of the mountains of Chiapas, in other words, a landscape that is well worth a revolution.

Things have changed a lot since then. At that time, Marcos was the face—the balaclava—of the EZLN, the spokesperson, the indisputable symbol of the indigenous insurgency that declared war on the Government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari. But the years have passed and the old subcommander has grown tired of the interviews and the spotlight. Since 2013, the main commander of the movement is Subcommander Moisés, who was in charge of giving the speech on the night of December 31.

With his renewed aversion to the front pages, one imagines a hermit Marcos in a cabin in the Lacandona jungle writing his emblematic communications to the rhythm of Keny Arkana, León Gieco, Panteón Rococo, Los Ángeles Azules or Joe Cocker—artists recently included in his publications in Enlace Zapatista—. He has even given instructions on how to dance: “Hint race! One step forward, one step back. Hip. Turn. Now on the side. Turn. Repeat. Vooooy! The rust, hey, the rust. A polka? Or a lying down corrido? I say, to support anthropologists. Are you wearing my hat and cowboy boots?! Don't I tell you? “Do something.”

There, yes, with paper and pencil, he has not stopped speaking out about the state of Chiapas, Mexico and the world, with his usual parodic and evil prose, intelligent and biting. In his latest texts, he has written about things like anger —“What if ever, in the unfinished book of history, someone looks at a light, any one, that, without fuss or slogans, points out 'this light was given birth to by rage'?”—, the memory —“and, dear friends and enemies, few things are as subversive as memory”—or searching mothers —“their foolish dignity teaches and shows the way”—.

In the last row

But back on the night of December 31, in his speech, Moisés spoke of the importance of actions over words, of not humanizing capitalism and organizing against it, of practicing a life together. He also recalled, in case anyone had forgotten, that the guerrilla is willing to wage war, despite the fact that until now it has opted for peaceful means, schools and hospitals rather than shooting ranges: “We don't need kill the soldiers and the bad governments, but if they come, we will defend ourselves.”

Meanwhile, Marcos did not stop sucking on his incombustible pipe—he never stops smoking, he must do it even in the shower—sitting with his back against the wall behind Moisés, in the fourth row of a row of chairs with the rest of the command. of the EZLN. He stood in the last row and in the middle, so that the camera lenses had to sharpen their gaze to find him among a sea of ​​hooded heads.

A while earlier, he had quietly arrived through the back door. He was betrayed by a column of militiamen formed in the darkness who were to surround him to prevent unwanted approaches. Also the wisps of smoke that he was spitting after savoring them with relish. He looked somewhat broken, far from the athletic figure that traveled around the world during those 12 days of war in 1994. The years do not pass in vain for anyone and Marcos is already well into his sixties.

A journalist approached to photograph him. The camera's red beam briefly illuminated the balaclava; He automatically put his hand to his face as if he were swatting away a fly and asked not to be photographed while he looked angry – it's difficult to know for sure: again, the balaclava.

On stage, the captain watched the parade-dance to the rhythm of cumbias and ska that the militiamen did, military maneuvers in the dark, and listened to the words of Moisés. When the subcomandante finished his speech, fireworks exploded, half to celebrate, half as a decoy while Marcos disappeared into the night again, flanked by the militiawomen to the interior of a wooden cabin.

The next day, he was seen again in the afternoon, in another pass of the guerrilla parade. At another time, a group of Otomi women, dressed in her best clothes, gave her some handmade dolls with the red star and the initials of the EZLN. They hugged him one by one. There, the captain smiled. And a little more.

Marcos and idealistic romanticism

Marcos' attempt to get away from the spotlight comes from a long time ago, when he was still deputy commander. From the first days of the uprising, the cameras showed a preference for him
compared to the rest of his companions, which is still paradigmatic, since he was one of the few non-indigenous militiamen in a guerrilla group of Tzotziles, Tzeltals, Choles, Tojolabales, moms and fools. He had charisma—although he didn't like the adjective—and his own way of shaping words.

His writings brimmed with literary resources, references to both high-caliber intellectuals and pop culture, memorable phrases, and corrosive self-parody humor, something rare in the usual revolutionary solemnity. “What happens is that Marcos's image responds to romantic, idealistic expectations. In other words, he is the white man, in the indigenous environment, closest to what the collective unconscious has as a reference: Robin Hood, Juan Charrasqueado, etc.,” he once told the also legendary journalist Julio Scherer García. “Believe me, we are much more mediocre than people think,” he added.

In that interview, in 2001, Scherer asked Marcos about his failures. He responded: “Marcos' fundamental error is not having taken care—and I forgive him because it is me, and if I don't forgive him, then who forgives him, right?—, not having foreseen this personalization and protagonism that many times, If not most of them, it prevents us from seeing what is behind it.” The conversation took place in the context of “The March of the Color of the Earth”, when the then deputy commander entered a crowded Zócalo aboard a truck trailer cheered to demand that President Vicente Fox comply with the San Andrés Accords (1996). ) and approved in Congress the autonomy of indigenous peoples.

In 2006, during “The Other Campaign,” a journey in which the Zapatistas toured the country to try to form a leftist front outside the one running for the presidential elections that year, he tried for the first time to leave the character behind. from Marcos. He named himself Delegate Zero, but the new nickname did not catch on and the press continued with the noise about Subcomandante Marcos, much to his displeasure. In 2014 he renamed himself Subcomandante Galeano, in honor of a murdered Zapatista professor. The new nickname of war has lasted until last October, when he announced the metaphorical death of Galeano and recovered Marcos, with the usual demotion to captain.

In reality, Marcos was not even named Marcos at birth—although he says he was reborn on January 1, 1994. At the end of that year, the newly inaugurated president Ernesto Zedillo stripped the then deputy commander of his balaclava in front of the entire country in an attempt to delegitimize his figure in the face of the massive popular support that the EZLN was receiving. At that time, the Government was negotiating with the guerrillas, and undermining Marcos's character would help tip the balance in his favor. It didn't work very well. According to Zedillo, the identity hidden behind the hood was that of Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, born in Tamaulipas in 1957, brother of a PRI politician. He was a student—and later professor—of philosophy at UNAM, where he won awards for his academic performance.

In 2001 he confessed to journalist Concha García Campoy on her Spanish radio program. Zero Wave that passed for a time in Spain, where he worked in a tavern and at El Corte Inglés: “They kicked me out of El Corte Inglés because it sold cheaper than what the labels said, and from the tavern, because I insisted on dancing flamenco.” Such an extreme experience finally led him to return to Mexico, leave the books on ethics and metaphysics and take to the mountains of Chiapas, from which he has never returned.

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