Zapatistas at the gates

The showdown between Subcomandante Marcos and Vicente Fox offers a golden opportunity to heal the wounds of the past. Much depends on Fox's intentions, as well as his leadership skills, writes Hisham El-Naggar
The Zapatistas' march on the Mexican capital, with Subcomandante Marcos at its head, was fraught with symbolism. Their impressive show of strength, with hundreds of thousands of supporters and sympathisers lining the streets of Mexico's cities and filling its squares, was rightly regarded as a decisive landmark in the history of the antagonistic relations between Mexico's natives and the country's ruling class.
Much of the American continent has witnessed the dispossession of natives at the hands of European colonial masters. Mexico is a striking case for two reasons. First, colonial rule there is widely recognised as having been particularly brutal, the Spanish conquistadors having literally plucked the budding flower of Aztec civilisation, proceeding thereafter to enslave and exploit the numerous native tribes.
Second, more than any other country in the region, post-colonial Mexico laid claim to the glorious heritage of native civilisations. The War of Independence and the Mexican Revolution of 1910 are often represented as instances of Mexico's natives coming into their own. That, at any rate, is part of the official history which has molded the country's impressive national identity.
Reality is, however, more ambiguous: natives have remained poverty-stricken and the Mexican revolution -- whose heirs, the leaders of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), were defeated at the polls by Mexican President Vicente Fox last year -- was led by people who, for all the pride they expressed in the country's glorious past, were themselves of undisguised European stock.
"Geros" (literally, "blonds") is the way Mexicans refer to an elite which has little to do with the natives, who are hailed in official history books as the heart and soul of the Mexican people. And it is to this elite that Fox unquestionably belongs.
That said, Fox enjoys considerable goodwill throughout the country, having defeated the PRI fair and square in remarkably clean elections. Furthermore, many Mexicans have pinned their hopes on his reforming zeal, in particular his promise to clean up the corruption which flourished during the PRI's 70-year reign.
Where does that leave the country's natives, for whom Marcos claims to speak? As it turns out, the division between natives and "Europeans" is hardly clear-cut. In Mexico, as indeed in many Latin American countries, "mestizos" (people of mixed race) constitute the majority and there is considerable affinity between that heterogeneous majority -- which, after all, elected Fox -- and the pure-blooded Indians concentrated in, but by no means confined to, the south of the country.
The natives' true antagonists are a small but extremely powerful minority, mostly large landowners whose economic interests are threatened by concessions to the Zapatista insurgency. They perceive their property to be in the line of fire if the natives' right to regain their land is recognised and are thus quick to malign the rebellion. Opinion polls, however, show that an overwhelming majority of Mexicans desire a peaceful settlement with the Zapatistas.
This could be Fox's chance to pose as the arbiter of a dispute which Mexicans regard as an unfortunate, and remediable, wrong. His major asset is that he claims to represent something new in Mexico. The pious hypocrisy of the elite, represented by a "revolutionary" leadership which browbeat the country's natives, is precisely what a majority of Mexicans rejected in last year's historic election.
But is Fox that different from the PRI, especially on the issue of natives' rights? Despite his avowed preference for a negotiated solution, many in his National Action Party (PAN) are every bit as determined to make it impossible as those in the opposition PRI who back the landowners. Hence the contradiction in Fox's position: whatever his own intentions, he is obliged to depend on a party whose differences with the PRI are largely cosmetic. The two parties agreed on most issues following President Salinas Gortari's shift to the right in the early 1990s.
Should Fox decide to make a concerted effort to press Congress for a law recognising natives' rights, his strongest allies would be the left-wing Democratic Revolutionary Party, which is on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. This is not to say that Fox would not be able to garner enough support for such a law. The immense prestige and power of the presidency, in addition to the mandate acquired in his impressive victory, put him in a position to reach the settlement he has said he wants to achieve.
Fox's leadership qualities were highlighted by the welcome he extended to Marcos when the latter declared his intention to march on the capital. The march became a major media event. Dubbed "Zapatour" by local journalists, it included many distinguished foreign supporters as well as native and leftist groups. Marcos has shown himself adept at handling the local and foreign press and everyone agrees that he is a match for the public relations-conscious Fox.
In the end, however, it is not the clash of personalities which will define Mexico's future, but the devotion of the overwhelming majority to the ideal of a just, multi-ethnic society. It was for such a society that the 1910 Revolution was fought. It is not too late for a guerrilla leader of middle-class background and a right-wing president to do their bit to bring it about.
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