Media, Performance, and
Identity in World Perspective
MPI Research Group - Workshop Paper
It's the Image! It's the Image!: Subcomandante Marcos and the Internet
Rino G. Avellaneda, University of Wisconsin-Madison
A recent advertising campaign by the North American soda pop company Coca-Cola, clamors to its target audience that "Image is nothing, obey your thirst". In the age of the omnipresent swoosh that identifies Nike, this is quite ironic since image is the goal that consumes the time and energy of advertising executives all over the world. Not that the construction of images is the exclusive privy of Madison Avenue executives and of the industries that hire them to convince consumers to purchase Calvin Klein jeans, Kellogg's Rice Krispies, or the latest Honda car model. Historically, there have been numerous examples of the intrinsic need that religious movements, political parties, revolutionary cadres, social institutions and the consolidation of nations have had of building images tailored to their audiences and particular goals. Such need has been reflected in different places at different times. In religion, one could recall the elegant communicativeness of the Christian symbolism of the fish and the cross. In terms of consolidation of power, there is the instance of the physical and psychological gulf created between monarch and nobility in the courts of, among many, Al-Mansur and Louis XV. National consolidation, in turn, can barely be conceived without the potent imagery of flags and shields that forms part of national consciousness around the world. Moreover, one cannot forget the monumentality of, for example, the Forbidden City that mystified the masses under the Manchu Emperors. Individual image building is well exemplified by the omnipresence in Latin America and Europe of the icon of Che Guevara, the Argentinean doctor and Cuban revolutionary, during the socio-political turbulence of the 60's and 70's. Images of Che Guevara, in fact, are still highly visible today. They can be found in the hands of indigenous hawkers in the Zócalo in Mexico City, hanging from the necks of representatives of the Argentinean Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, and on posters sold in the streets of Bogotá, Colombia, which sport on the other side the representation of an almost totally naked Pamela Anderson, of Baywatch fame. Certainly, such long history of image-building has not been lost in the new revolutionary phenomenon that, from the Lacandón jungle of Chiapas, exploded in full not only onto the Mexican socio-political scene, but onto the world stage as well on New Year's Day, 1994: the Zapatista Revolution.
Not that the Zapatistas, as these end-of-the-century revolutionaries are known, had necessarily to do an international historical and archival search to find illustrations of how to manipulate image building to serve their goals. In Mexican history, there exist outstanding examples of such construction. For instance, this century, the Mexican state that coalesced politically in the 1920's after the national exhaustion of the Mexican Revolution, needed to build a sense of unity in the nation. One of the prongs of the state's approach to reach its goal was to foster, under the aegis of indigenismo, the cult of the Indian, the allocation of resources to create a massive renaissance of the mural art form, whose main representatives were Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco. Consequently, on the walls of many public buildings, appeared works of a heroic nature aiming to glorify the Indians, past and present. Part of this glorification, particularly in Rivera's work, was the beatification, and eventual canonization of the figure of Emiliano Zapata, whose name the 1994 Chiapas revolutionaries have adopted for their logo and banners. The depiction that Rivera makes of Zapata follows an ever abstracting tendency that presents the champion of "Land and Liberty", first, as a haloed saint dressed in martyr's robes; then, as the buried living force that nurtures the sacred corn; later, as an immaculately innocent campesino garbed all in white and armed with a machete; and finally, as the agrarian leader, stripped of most personal details, underlining its halo-hat, the ample mustache, the crossed bandoleras , or cartridge belts, on the chest, and the rifle in his right hand. This icon embodies one of the cardinal rules of propaganda: simplicity and subtlety applied to optical and psychological effects to capture more easily the attention of the masses.
The revolution in Chiapas has not only achieved the goal of capturing the attention of the masses, it has also invaded their imaginary. The events in Chiapas go well beyond what can be called "another protest by the wretched of the earth in a 500 year history of resistance."(1) Indeed, from a localized conflict in one of the most historically marginalized areas of Mexico, the Zapatista struggle has reached to the diverse alienated groups all over Mexico, helping a great deal to consolidate, for example, Mexico's New Indian Movement, which "encompasses nearly all 56 indigenous peoples in Mexico."(2) At the same time, the movement has inspired activism in its support in many regions of the world. The question arises, then, how could this small group of revolutionaries achieve, from their pre-modern and neglected state, such national and international impact? It could be answered that aside from the traditional romantic perspective that views the rebellion of the oppressed in the face of overwhelming odds as heroic and deserving of sympathy and support, the role of image building has been crucial from the very onset of the Zapatista uprising.
The process of Zapatista image construction follows a two-pronged emphasis. On the one hand, the movement had to make use of the technological means available at the time of start of military action during the 1994-1995 New Year transition in order to both deliver its message and counter the formidable apparatus of oppositional propaganda that the Mexican government wields. On the other hand, the Zapatistas had to have a leader whose face could be recognized and associated with the movement, and whose voice could proclaim the movement's message. To address the technological requirements, the Zapatistas found the Internet to be a greatly advantageous weapon that has had the Mexican government on the defensive in the propaganda front from the onset of the revolution. The need of a visible leader was solved in the person of Subcomandante Marcos who has proven to have the propaganda charm that has enchanted media, Net surfers, and audiences all over the world.
The political dimensions of the Internet seem to have been clear among the leadership of the Zapatista movement.(3) It is a fact that "Within a few hours after the takeover of San Cristóbal de las Casas by the Zapatistas on the morning of January 1 [1994], computer screens around the world sparked with news of the uprising".(4) In addition, President Ernesto Zedillo has become personally acquainted with Zapatista power in the Internet. A few hours after ordering a widespread manhunt for Subcomandante Marcos, his "fax machine broke or was eventually turned off. . .as cyber-peaceniks sent out urgent requests over the Internet for a fax campaign."(5) The sheer volume forced Zedillo to rescind his orders. In August of this year, the Mexican group X-Ploit hacked the country's Finance Ministry Web site, replacing it with the face of revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata. More recently, on October 12, Zedillo's Web site was attacked and compromised by a group of "hacktivists" of the New York-based Electronic Disturbance Theatre.(6)
These uses of the Internet had also been foremost among conservative think-tank circles in the United States well before the Chiapas events of January 1994. A year earlier, in an article titled "Cyberwar is coming!", two analysts working for the Rand Corporation, John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, coined a couple of relevant terms, "cyberwar" and "netwar" to discuss how
The information revolution and related organizational innovations are altering the nature of conflict and the kinds of military structures, doctrines, and strategies that will be needed.(7)
The Rand analysts' document points out that cyberwar "refers to knowledge-related conflict at the military level". At the same time, they discuss "netwars", which can be defined as activities by non-governmental groups, including advocacy groups and social movements, "that use informational networks to coordinate action to influence, change or fight government policy."(8) Arquilla and Ronfeldt conclude that "future conflicts will be fought more by 'networks' than by 'hierarchies', and that whoever masters the network will gain major advantages". The logical consequence, according to them, is that institutions which are built around hierarchies, can be defeated by networks, and [that] it may take networks to defeat networks".
The preoccupation reflected in this argument is quite valid if we take into account that the Internet is not the only net that is available to those waging "netwars". For example, heated arguments have raged in Europe about the European Counter Network (ECN). Advocating the need for what he calls "the forces of order" to take action, Alfredo D'Amato, in an editorial in il Giornale, argues that "Even the subversives of 'Worker's Autonomy' are keeping up with the times, marching to the rhythm of hardware. The battlefield is no longer in the streets, but in cyberspace, that virtual reality hidden behind computer screens." An article from the Italian left daily Il Manifesto, in turn, poses that "The ECN is much closer to the reality of 'electronic democracy' than the schemes advanced by the countless entrepreneurs keen to cash in on the Internet. It is a rank-and-file, horizontal network, open to all those who wish to communicate with social centres, BBS (electronic mailboxes], free radio stations, and documentation centres both in Italy and elsewhere."(9)
Whatever the political bend one may have, one cannot escape the fact that, as Charles Swett, an analyst of United States Department of Defense, states in a 1995 document titled "Strategic Assessment: The Internet",
The political process is moving onto the Internet. Both within the United States and internationally, individuals, interest groups, and even nations are using the Internet to find each other, discuss the issues, and further their political goals.(10)
Swett also quotes a 1994 U.S. Army document that describes the particular case of the Zapatistas in these terms: "...Subcomandante Marco (sic) of the Zapatista Liberation Army (EZLN) in Mexico utilizes a portable laptop computer to issue orders to other EZLN units via modem, and to foreign media contacts in order to maintain a favorable international propaganda image."(11) The Army document goes on to conclude that with a higher frequency, any so called "insurgent" group's "access to and utilization of electronic media technology for exploiting the information superhighway will bolster their support networks and enhance their command and control."
This is exactly what the Zapatistas did from day one in January 1994. And their ability to manage the media, in general, and the Internet , in particular, has only grown since then. A summary survey of Web sites today produces the following results: for "Subcomandante Marcos", there are 458 active web pages; for the word "Zapatista", 2,206 of them; for "EZLN", there are 1,459; and the input of "Chiapas" results in 6,129 web pages. To no one's surprise, the Mexican government has been forced to go into damage-control mode in the traditional media and in the Internet, which has witnessed the appearance of pages that offer official counter views.(12) The purpose of the government's propaganda machine has been to portray the Zapatistas "as foreign troops/socialists/Marxists."(13) The smearing campaign on the part of the government has gone as far as to proclaim that the Zapatistas have created close ties with Neo-Nazi German groups.(14) The official campaign, however, hampered by the closing of Chiapas to foreigners and to media representatives, has not been as successful as the ballooning of the Zapatista networks. In fact, many in the media, faced with dilemma of choosing between official and Zapatista sources, have repeatedly opted for the rebels' version of the events. This was crucial at the beginning of the Chiapas information war, when the Mexican government ended up losing not only the netwar to the Zapatistas, but also the international television struggle since CNN afforded the Chiapanecos direct access to the outside world, far from any semblance of Mexican governmental controls.(15) And, undoubtedly, it continues to be important, corroborating what, perhaps in a self-referential mode, Subcomandante Marcos has said about the fact that "What governments should really fear is a communications expert."(16)
The type of oppositional electronic militancy the Subcomandante alludes to has not fallen on deaf ears around the world. For instance, the governments of Malaysia and Indonesia, like their Mexican counterpart, have discovered the dangers of the Internet. Although they have worked hard at attempting to regulate its use, oppositional forces, through E-mail and web pages have become organized. Upon his persecution by the government, Malaysia's recently sacked prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, established his own web site, which has received more than 800.000 visits in a month and has links to 58 Anwar-related web sites, all of which support him and have been established since his sacking. In Indonesia, the use of E-mail has galvanized the formidable recent antigovernment student demonstrations. Moreover, crudely vivid photographic material of the riots in which scores of Chinese women were raped in Jakarta last May have appeared on a web page run by overseas Chinese and have been instrumental in mobilizing protests against the Indonesian government around the world. An article on this use of the Internet concludes by saying that "Admittedly, in Indonesia, a poor country getting poorer, net use is in its infancy and pretty much confined to an elite. But it will grow there as well, with political consequences."(17)
The Internet, then, open worldwide channels to the Zapatistas. An observer has commented that
the Zapatistas' first declaration was reproduced nationally in the Mexican daily La Jornada. Within hours, it was translated into English (and within the first week, into many other languages). The declaration was down-loaded into the files of newspaper and magazine journalists, and was posted on dozens of computer bulletin boards and conferences to be reproduced in hard copies in hundreds of venues."(18)
The Zapatistas, in turn, were monitoring this distribution closely and obtained feedback. Subcomandante Marcos has said that
we learned that there were marches and songs and movies and other things that were not war in Chiapas, which is the part of Mexico where we live and die. And we learned that these things happened, and that "NO TO WAR!" was said in Spain and in France and in Italy and in Germany and in Russia and in England and in Japan and in Korea and in Canada and in the United States and in Argentina and in Uruguay and in Chile and in Venezuela and in Brazil and in other parts. . .(19)
It was to the Internet surfers, hackers, page designers, listers, E-mailers, that the Zapatistas directly have addressed some of their messages. In March, 1994, Subcomandante Marcos wrote this cleverly phrased message: "For those that no one sees. Greetings brother Zapatista-moles. We have shown thanks for your patient and obscure work [and] Until the last hour we will salute the dark side that supported our brilliance.(20) The dark side of the Internet responded enthusiastically expanding the confines to which the Zapatista message could reach.
What, then, did motivate the Zapatistas to take advantage of the, until then, almost untested politically revolutionary power of the Internet, an instrument ironically born out of the Cold War military establishment?(21) Part of the answer is simply that they were aware of the existence of discussion and communication networks that had been organized before January 1994. Indeed, the communications infrastructure of the various groups that came together in the Internet to coordinate their oppositional struggle against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was still intact. There were "coalitions of dozens of groups of workers, farmers, women, students, environmentalists, and the indigenous" that came together periodically in metings and through the Internet. Many among these groups responded actively when the Zapatistas declared NAFTA a "death sentence" for indigenous peoples and campesinos.
The Internet communications infrastructure was in place and ready to use. And in more than a figurative sense, the target audience for the Zapatista messages was also in place. On the one hand, the anti-NAFTA coalitions were wired and in constant exchange of materials and views. On the other hand, there was the original use of radio and television broadcasts and other traditional news media, such as news wires and newspaper reports. Although the Zapatistas were successful on getting out the news of their uprising, most of the Mexican and international media, with the noticeable exception of the Mexico City daily La Jornada, the substance of their declaration of war was not widely distributed. This communications breakdown found a resolution when interested supporters in Mexico "typed or scanned the communiqués and letters into e-text form and sent them out over The Net to potentially receptive audiences around the world."(22)
According to Professor Cleaver of the University of Texas, the basic layer of distribution targeted UseNet newsgroups, PeaceNet conferences, Internet lists of concerned individuals, humanitarian associations, networks of indigenous peoples, perceived counterculture and leftist grassroots groups, and networks of feminists. Following a sort of fractal growth, many of these receptive individuals and organizations rebroadcasted Zapatista news, and ideological and creative pieces throughout much of the Net domains and territories. The success of Zapatista communication schema can be seen in the fact that the gathering in Chiapas to discuss a global strategy to combat Neoliberalism, which was called for by the Zapatistas in July, 1996, brought together more than 3,000 grassroots activists and intellectuals from 42 countries on 5 continents.(23)
The initial and somewhat disjointed Internet undertakings have evolved over time into complex and sophisticated activities, incorporating the work of, at times, dozens of individuals. There are two outstanding examples of this technical evolution. One is Chiapas95, a web page administered by Acción Zapatista de Austin (Texas), a true warehouse of information about Chiapas and the Zapatistas, as well as a gateway to numerous other destinations in the Web related to the same issues.(24) The other one is the multimedia project known as ZapNet, a network of students and activists based in the ACTlab at the University of Texas at Austin. According to their documentation, "Zapnet is interested in utilizing new technologies to promote dialogues and share information within an interactive, multimedia rich environment" that requires that, although one can view the material in text only, the users be conversant in sophisticated software in order to enjoy the most benefit from the information available in it.(25)
The intensity and persistence of postings, repostings, cuttings, pastings, attachments, and forwardings, stemming from and circulating within lists, personal E-mail systems, networks, and web pages all over the world rapidly outpaced the resources and efforts by the Mexican government and by many news organizations both to control the flow of information coming out of Chiapas and to offer antizapatista propaganda.(26) Government Web pages and the messages they generate even in the case they receive wide distribution, are completely drowned in the sheer volume of messages circulated by all the prozapatista resources in the Net.
Not all, however, has been successful in the Internet front. It is important to underline that while it is true that the Internet has become the "Information Superhighway" so desired by US political leaders, in the case of the Zapatistas, such communications' artery cannot reach many of the intended targets. There is no doubt that the messages emanating from the jungles and mountains of Chiapas, from the towns under Zapatista control, and from Mexico City support groups reverberate as if in a house of mirrors through the Internet to reach people like us, who are rooted in universities and can rely upon the institutional technology that institutions of higher education can provide in countries like the U.S., Italy, France, Great Britain or Germany.(27) Many of us, for any number of reasons, willingly, or unwittingly?, have become Internet foot soldiers for the Zapatistas, distributing their messages to the Net organizations to which we belong, to colleagues, and to students in our classes. The chain reaction thus generated does not stop there since our actions are repeated innumerable times by the addressees of our messages who do not opt for the peace of mind that the delete button can give many of us when we check our E-mail.
The educational elite, then, received the message loud and clear, and acted upon it. The same is not as clear elsewhere. If some groups that are organized outside the boundaries of the Net can reach other groups via that "Superhighway" and engage in dissemination of information and exchange of ideas, the reality is that the resources of the Internet are not within reach of most of the population of the world. In spite of efforts to create community "Free-Nets" in several countries, a great deal of groups, urban and, more so, rural, such as many Native Americans, Chicanos, and Mexicanos in the US and Canada, with which the Zapatistas would desire to establish permanent and more interactive links, do not have the resources to connect to the Net.(28)
The same can be said of groups at the continental and intercontinental levels that could benefit from the connections of the Zapatistas and, at the same time, could expand the support basis of the Mexican revolutionaries. And if such groups or communities can receive assistance of mediators, organizational or individual, to access the Internet, most of their individual members and families do not have direct access to it, and thus, cannot reach even the level of pedestrians in the Information Superhighway. Complicating things further is the fact that communication per se does not imply understanding and cooperation. The Internet can only guarantee faster and more voluminous communication, but the nuances of politics, power, language, culture, experiences, national identities, income, among others, color and condition the translation between communication, and cooperation and action.(29)
The Zapatista option for the Internet, besides being a decision based on the pragmatic fact that they recognized the importance of an already existing anti-NAFTA communication infrastructure, was also a decision taken by a leadership familiarized with the latest technological instruments available in January, 1994. An observer of the Zapatista struggle has said that the Internet was the choice of those members of the EZLN who were "educated, urban Mexicans."(30) This view is confirmed by another analyst who writes that opposite to the rank and file, "A very few [Zapatistas] are intellectuals drawn to the area over a decade ago by their ideals and hopes."(31) Who are these so-called "de-professionalized" intellectuals? They, we are told,
serve as mediators to help us understand the larger political processes out of which the EZLN has emerged, and within which it continues to operate. They have drafted many of the communiqués and served as the public voice for both the Army and the wider community. They speak our language and speak to us in words that are familiar. We can understand them easily because we all share the forms of discourse common to Western political traditions.
The savvy of Zapatista leadership aside, it is entirely possible to imagine that perhaps the use of the Internet by the Zapatistas was dictated more by circumstances outside their control than by any pre-arranged plan. Faced at the beginning of their armed struggle, as it is discussed above, with the walling in of their message, the Zapatistas must have become very aware of the fact that the volunteers that went surfing the Net to distribute the Declaration of War had a resounding success. To go from this to the onset of an orchestrated effort to continue broadcasting messages via the Net, does not require a leap of faith. Moreover, such organizational change in outlook would not be very difficult to achieve among the networking-oriented Indian cultures of Chiapas. And maybe the leadership has had counseling that believes, as does Jamie Heller, executive director of the New York financial-news site, TheStreet.com, that "There was a time when [a newspaper] was a very efficient way to get information. . .But it's no match for the Internet. The Internet makes it easier to be both thorough and immediate." In a similar vein, publisher Matt Drudge stated, in a speech to the National Press Club last June, that "We have entered an era vibrating with the din of small voices. . Every citizen can be a reporter, can take on the powers that be. . .We all become equal."(32)
Whatever the initial impulse to ride on the Information Superhighway may have been, the Zapatista apparatus needed two crucial weapons in its war against the Mexican government: a spokesperson to advertise the revolutionary socio-political platform and a symbol that could become synonym with the struggle.(33) Fortunately for the Zapatistas, they found both in one individual: Subcomandante Marcos. Octavio Paz, the Mexican Nobel Laureate, laments both the Chiapas Revolution and Subcomandante Marcos by saying that it is unscrupulous to say, as it has become popular to do nowadays, that the "Chiapas Movement was the first post communist revolution of the 21st century." Moreover, Paz continues, it is clear that its spokesperson "stands out as well through an art forgotten by our politicians and ideologues: rhetoric."(34) Paz may be onto something when he qualifies the Zapatista phenomenon as a media spectacle. To the great dismay of Mexican officials, the ranks of the list of celebrities that have made the pilgrimage to Chiapas in order to interview, talk to, and be seen with the Subcomandante continues to grow steadily. Oliver Stone missed the Oscar ceremonies in 1996 to meet with him. Danielle Miterrand, wife of the former French Prime Minister, Eduardo Galeano, the Uruguayan writer, and the eminent sociologist Alain Tourraine have been his guests in the town of La Realidad, as also have been Noam Chomsky, Carlos Monsiv‡is, and numerous Catholic clergy supporters of Liberation Theology. Trejo Delarbre, author of a text about media and the Zapatistas, wields his frustration about the fact that, in his words, "At the end of this century, in Mexico we have not been able to get rid of that populist fascination for [the] mystical leadership [of caudillismo]." It appears that some of this fascination is within all of us. Trejo Delarbre goes on to quote from a radio report that describes an incident during the visit to San Cristóbal de las Casas by Pedro Casaldáliga, Bishop of São Félix, in Brazil, in these terms
There took place here a very particular and interesting Eucharistic celebration. Atop a somewhat damaged cardboard box, they placed an altar. On it, there was a wooden crucifix and the cover page of the weekly publication Proceso, containing an effigy of Subcomandante Marcos. Monsignor Casaldáliga said that at this juncture Jesus Christ shows himself to the whole continent with his face covered by a ski mask.(35)
Subcomandante Marcos, whose image can be found from Bogotá to Tokyo, and along all Earth meridians and on all media, has certainly given rise to interest, controversies, illusions, animadversion, followings, and disqualifications of all sorts. The first natural reaction before the Subcomandante Marcos is one of desire to identify who he is. In pursuing this, we would all do well to keep in mind that, as Antonio García de León has written, "today the distinctive identity can be more an option than something based on the predetermined social nature of each individual."(36) And aware of the mythical proportions he has reached, opting is what Subcomandante Marcos does. When asked to identify himself, he gives any number of wide open and different answers, of which a typical one is that he was born somewhere between the Río Bravo [also known as Rio Grande] and the Suchiate River. He nonchalantly adds that
I studied in a university in this country, I did not study in Oxford, overseas, because now it is quite the fashion to study overthere. I studied in a Mexican university, I finished my studies, which already is quite a feat, I graduated and did graduate studies. . .and I was happy for a while until I got drunk, took the wrong bus and fell in the Lacandón jungle. When I realized it, there I was, and I could not leave again. That was 11 years ago. And here I am, again.(37)
Many others have come up with their own definitions of who Subcomandante Marcos is. One author writes that "Marcos, of course, is not his real name." He goes on to say that the Subcomandante adopted the name, which belonged to a member of the group that went with him to Chiapas in 1983, twelve persons that supposedly inherited the work of the Frente de Liberación Nacional that the Mexican government had annihilated in 1974, survivors of the "failure" of political options.(38) In elegantly figurative prose, Alain Turaine describes Subcomandante Marcos as a guerrilla fighter and an ideologist who
is the bird that flies from south to north and from east to west in order to bring the cardinal points closer, and who remains suspended in flight, between all these points that so much resist to come close to each other. [He is] the bird that took flight from the lands where Che Guevara died and flies towards the lands of democracy that are still hidden under the rains in Chiapas and the storms of Mexican politics.(39)
Such lucid prose is also mirrored in Subcomandante Marcos's own writings about his persona. A particularly beautiful passage clearly diffuses the person in Chiapas to focus it within the collective imaginary of his audience:
Marcos is gay in San Francisco, a black in South Africa, Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Isidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, an indigenous person in the streets of San Cristóbal, a gang member in Neza, a rocker on campus, a Jew in Germany, an ombudsman in the Department of Defence, a feminist in a political party, a communist in the post-Cold War period, a prisoner in Cintalapa, a pacifist in Bosnia, a Mapuche in the Andes, a teacher in the National Confederation of Educational Workers, an artist without a gallery or a portfolio, a housewife in any neighbourhood in any city in any part of Mexico on a Saturday night, a guerrilla in Mexico at the end of the twentieth century, a striker in the CTM, a sexist in the feminist movement, a woman alone in a Metro station at 10 p.m., a retired person standing around in the Zocalo, a peasant without land, an underground editor, an unemployed worker, a doctor with no office, a non-conformist student, a dissident against neoliberalism, a writer without books or readers, and a Zapatista in the Mexican southeast. In other words, Marcos is a human being in this world. Marcos is every untolerated, oppressed, exploited minority that is resisting and saying 'Enough!'"(40)
Another angle of interpretation of Subcomandante Marcos' identity is the insightful analysis made by José Pablo Feinmann. He sees direct links between Marcos and another mythological figure in Latin American history: Ernesto Che Guevara.(41) According to Feinmann, in spite of their differences in their conceptualization of power there are two links that connect both guerrilleros.(42) The first one is the "pathos of rejection of the instituted, of the established, and its consequent compromise with all those that suffer the rigors of injustice." A second link is their "radical option for the defenseless." To the possible conclusion that Subcomandante Marcos is Che's "light version," Feinmann offers that the Subcomandante is Che plus "the experience of the years gone by, the failures, the dead, the spilled blood." Analysis are as varied as people themselves. Another genial user of masks, and an internationally recognized performance artist, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, maintains that "every Mexican has a theory about [Marcos's] identity": Anything from foreign intellectual, radical Jesuit priest, and ex-leader of the 1968 student movement to a puppet of the PRI, a bisexual hipster, or a mystic who will fulfill prophecies from the Popol Vuh.(43)
Such intertwining of masks behind which Subcomandante Marcos hides creates illusory representations that mirror the masks, dreams, and desires of those who are looking at him. This, in turn, transforms his image, associated to his words, into a dynamic media package that is attractive across social, economic, ethnic, linguistic, and why not, ideological borders. As Stanton puts it, perhaps describing most people we know at our institutions of higher learning, "Marcos gives identity to all those helping, reading or just browsing a Zapatista web site [because] He knows his readers -intelligent, educated, liberal and probably a little bored with the internet and [with] no great cause in their lives."(44)
Given the interest that Subcomandante Marcos's image and person has awaken from the onset of the armed conflict in Chiapas, it is not surprising that the Mexican government wanted to find out exactly who they were dealing with. Recently declassified Pentagon documents shed some light about the frantic search done for the identity of Subcomandante Marcos. From them, it is clear that the US military intelligence services knew of the existence of the Chiapas guerrillas, including their names, at least a half a year before the uprising on January 1, 1994.(45) A year later, the Mexican government announced that Subcomandante Marcos was, in reality, Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, a former university professor of bourgeois background who had participated in student revolutionary activities in the 1970's and had disappeared in 1983, suspectedly having gone to live for several years in Nicaragua.(46) The Mexican government is certainly entitled to add its interpretation to the Subcomandante's identification pantheon.
At the same time that most of us want to know who Subcomandante Marcos is, we want to maintain the myth alive. At this point in the history of the Chiapas rebellion, could anyone stop associating the masked images that the Zapatistas and their propaganda and information media machinery have plastered all over t.v. sets, printed pages, newspapers, magazines, web pages, posters, both printed and Net books, video clips, medallions, pins, and t-shirts? As much as Che Guevara became associated with his black beret, his beard, and his mustache, Subcomandante Marcos has become associated with his black ski mask, his paliacate, his Zapata style bandolera and his pipe. Get rid of the ski mask? The careful staging of press conferences, interviews, and photographic materials, and the attention to the various elements that compose the Subcomandante's image, many borrowed from or inspired by XX-Century prominent international figures, has led a commentator to say that "since the second day of the conflict. . .The war was carried on as if it were a performance."(47) Get rid of the ski mask? No, have said the folks at the Zapatista Net of Autonomy & Liberation, who use a fuming pipe as an icon for each of the items in its Web page menus. Get rid of the ski mask? The answer may have been given for us at the Convención Nacional Democr‡tica that met in the Chiapas village of Aguascalientes in August, 1994. There, Subcomandante Marcos asked the assembly how many in the audience would like him to remove his ski mask in order to reveal his identity. After a long silence, "only two or three" raised their hands. Get rid of the ski mask? It would crack, perhaps irreversibly, the Subcomandante's carefully crafted performance self, dispelling the necessary masks of myth, and risking turning him into his old, and perhaps boring, college professor persona. Get rid of the ski mask? Guillermo Gómez-Peña, in his irrepressibly humorous style, warns us of another no less dangerous risk when he asks, "What if [Subcomandante Marcos] is ugly or nerdy?"(48)
A critic recently wrote that the subaltern is there to be consumed in a "great Bakhtinian banquet where everyone can find a place at the table and a share in the feasting."(49) Get rid of the ski mask? We all will do well to remember that such banquet has more than enough places for the subaltern to partake, and that historically, anthropophagy has played a much more profound socio-cultural and political role in the "peripheries" than in the "centers." Get rid of the ski mask? We all will also do well to heed Subcomandante Marcos's invitation to fracture ourselves. As he puts it, "simulation is [] an important resistance tactic. Try being three people, or five. However many you think that you can properly support. Far too many people think that they are only entitled to one name, or only two hands." Get rid of the ski mask? Subcomandante Marcos signs off his call to rupturing by wishing us that all of our "simulacra come true."(50) To which I say: Amen.
Endnotes
1. Harry Cleaver, "The Chiapas
Uprising and the Future of Class Struggle in the New World
Order," a revision of an article of the same title written
for the Italian journal Riff-Raff. It is available at:
gopher://mundo.eco.utexas.edu:70/00fac/hmcleave/Cleaver%20Papers/The%20Chiapas%20Uprising%20Feb
94.
2. This is an observation made by Laura Carlsen in her "Mexico's New Indian Movement," Resource Center Bulletin 45 (January 1996), at http://www.zianet.com/irc1/bulletin/bull45.html. Carlsen concludes that "Inspired by the Zapatista uprising, a new generation of young people are cutting their political teeth in remote Indian communities."
3. Raœl Trejo Delarbre, Chiapas: La comunicación enmascarada: Los medios y el pasamonta-as, Mexico, D.F..: Editorial Diana, 1994, 38, writes that "There was a conscious intent on the part of the EZLN, counting on specific abilities, in order to wage the Chiapas War through the various media." He quotes the surprised reaction of José Gutiérrez Viv--, a reputed broadcaster and director of Radio Red, on January 11, 1994: "Last night, we received a communiqué, via fax, from the EZLN. The gentlemen of this army are quite well organized in matters of communication." All translations from the Spanish in this essay are mine, unless otherwise indicated.
4. See Deedee Halleck, "Zapatistas On-Line," NACLA Report on the Americas, 28.2 (Sept-Oct 1994): p. 30.
5. Daniel Brandt, "Infowar and Disinformation: From the Pentagon to the Net," NameBase NewsLine, 11 (October-December 1995). The article can be consulted at: http://cpsr.org/cpsr/nii/cyber-rights/archive/Essays/Brandt-Infowar.
6. According to the Theatre, "It was a political act, an occasion for Internet activists to demonstrate continued resistance to centuries of colonization, genocide, and racism in the western hemisphere and throughout the world." (Bob Paquin, "E-Guerrillas in the Mist", The Ottawa Citizen, October 26, 1998) http://www.ottawacitizen.com/hightech/981026/1964496.html.
This time Zapatista Networks responded with a new level of electronic civil disobedience beyond the passing of information and E-mailing presidents. On Sunday the 18th of January 1998 as points out an article titled "Digital Zapatismo" that Ricardo Dominguez wrote for mexico2000@mep-d.org on Tuesday, April 28, 1998, there was a call for NetStriking for Zapata (from Anonymous Digital Coalition) with the following instructions:
In solidarity with the Zapatista movement we welcome all netsurfers with ideals of justice, freedom, solidarity and liberty within their hearts, to a virtual sit-in. On January 29, 1998 from 4:00 p.m. GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) to 5:00 p.m. (in the following five web sites, symbols of Mexican neoliberalism):
Bolsa Mexicana de Valores: http://www.bmv.com.mx
Grupo Financiero Bital: http://www.bital.com.mx
Grupo Financiero Bancomer: http://www.bancomer.com.mx
Banco de Mexico: http://www.banxico.org.mx
Banamex: http://www.banamex.comTechnical instructions: Connect with your browser to the upper mentioned web sites and push the bottom "reload" several times for an hour (with in between an interval of few seconds).
This virtual sit-in not only brought the possibilities of direct electronic actions to the forefront of the Zapatista networks, it also initiated a more focused analysis of what methods of electronic civil disobedience might work. Several questions were brought up on the issues of net traffic, ISPs, and small international pipes. Speculations on the technological implications of these actions began to focus on questions of Who is most likely to be damaged by this move? The Mexican target banks or the Internet Service Providers, ISPs, who route data to these banks? As these discussions were taking place a group of Mexican digital activist on February 4, 1998 hacked into a Mexican government home page on the Internet and placed pro-Zapatista slogans on the front pages of the site.
7. Arquilla and Ronfeldt's essay is found at http://gopher.well.sf.ca.us:70/0/Military/cyberwar. Brandt quotes Neil Munro, of the Washington Post: "The Pentagon has drafted a classified document asking the White House to draw a national infowar strategy."
8. See Jason Wehling, "Netwars and Activists' Power on the Internet" at http://www.teleport.com/~jwehling/Netwars.html.
9. This information is taken from an Internet message whose contents were extracted from Italian CounterINFO 10 (April 1, 1995).
10. Swett's document is available at http://www.fas.org/cp/swett.html.
11. The paper is U.S. Army Intelligence, "Technical Applications for Insurgents," (unclassified) (15 December 1994).
12. In addition to the official government pages, there are other sites like the anonymously prepared and maintained "Emiliano Zapata" at http://www.zapatistas.com/home_page.html, which builds an anti-guerrilla diatribe on the premise that "Marcos and his active followers of the EZLN keep on disgracing this grand revolutionary hero's name."
13. See David Stanton "Zapatistas Rebel on the Internet," in the Internet Publication The News Bit 1.1.
14. Government hackers are also active. According to Bob Paquin, it is known that
during the time of the action someone from Mexico attempted to remotely break into server at Thing.net several times and failed. Machine *t3s31.data.net.mx* (http://www.data.net.mx/) tried to get access on three Thing.net machines on April 9th and 10th. Also one of the members of the NYZapatistas who posted information about the Flood Net action on his Homepage was hit with a spam of over 3000 emails. Some of them containing odd subject headings, such as *We Are Watching You*.
The netwar, continues Paquin, extends to the fact that
since Jan 1, 1994 the analysis of the Digital Zapatismo has been at the top of the list of the Military and Intelligence research agenda. We hope that both coordinated and uncoordinated actions can, like the Lilliputians, constrain this violent giant by many tiny bonds. For now all we can do is continue to forge ahead and always remember that all of this electronic activism is about a real community in search of a real peace. A community that has been calling for a world the makes all worlds possible.
15. Wehling, writing before the signing of the Guatemalan Peace Accords, agrees with Aquilla and Ronfeldt about the effectiveness of netwars, by looking at the cases of Guatemala and Chiapas. According to him, "There are many parallels between the current situation in Chiapas and the drawn out civil war in Guatemala, yet the Guatemalan military has been able to nearly kill without impunity while the Mexican military received a coordinated, international attack literally hours after they mobilized their troops". Not that the Peace Accord ended the cycle of violence in Guatemala. The Economist (November 14 1998): 17-18, underlines that a symptom of the failure to reconstruct the Guatemalan military and police is the unsolved murder, after six months, of Bishop Juan Gerardi, "who headed the church's project to document human-rights abuses during the civil war". This, in turn, perpetuates "the atmosphere the peace accords were supposed to end."
16. (Newsweek, Feb. 27, 1995).
17. See "Dissident Politics on the Net," The Economist Review, (November 14 1998): 8.
18. See Deedee Halleck, "Zapatistas On-Line," Nacla Report on the Americas, 28.2 (Sept-Oct 1994): 30-33. This article is also available at http://www.zianet.com/irc1/bulletin/bull45.html. Halleck also says that the initial postings on the Internet, generated great reaction from around the world. She remarks that in the weeks following the declaration of war in 1994, "Internet watchers avidly scanned the exciting news from the jungle", "E-mailers reacted with comments and speculation", and "There were hundreds of screens of discussion over whether or not Marcos was a priest".
19. The quote is from Jason Wheling, "Netwars and Activists Power on the Internet", at http://www.teleport.com/~jwheling/Netwars.html.
20. See Kalleck, "Zapatistas On-Line."
21. ARPANET became, in 1969, the first on-line computer network, financed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency in the U.S. Defense Department.
22. See Cleaver, "The Zapatistas..."
23. See Zapatistas in Cyberspace at http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/zapsincyber.html. It is a comprehensive guide to analyses; Internet lists, conferences, and newsgroups; world wide web sites; archives; books; and photographs, mail art, and posters available in the Internet and related to the Zapatistas.
24. Chiapas95 is located at http://www.eco.utexas.edu/Homepages/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html. The list is in Spanish, but there are connections to "Chiapas95-lite" and "Chiapas95-English".
25. The address of Zapnet is http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/~zapatistas/guide.html. Instrumental in the performance of both Chiapas95 and Zapnet has been Zapatistas! Documents of the Revolution, an "electronic and anticopyright publication", which can be located at gopher://lanic.utexas.edu:70/11/la/Mexico/Zapatistas/. It is a comprenhensive book that "contains the full, English language text of every communiqué published" by the Zapatistas, "along with several that were not published, as well as many interviews, letters, and essays) from the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) from December 31, 1994 through June 12, 1994." In the truly Antiestablishmentarian spirit of vast sectors of the Internet, the authors say that the book may be freely pirated and quoted for non-commercial purposes, provided that a portion of any income derived thereby returns to the Indigenous and campesino communities of Southern Mexico." The Editorial Collective adds that "the book and much of the publicity about the EZLN would not have been possible without the growing community of politically-minded people on the internet."
26. Cleaver, "The Zapatistas...", states that "Clearly the [Mexican government] has not yet been able to achieve anything like an active counterinsurgency presence in The Net." He goes on to conclude that "The same can be said. . .about all other governments, including that of the United States".
27. Some in the U.S. even see ideological and political lessons to be learned from the Zapatistas. In an essay included in a collection of writings by Subcomandante Marcos and the EZLN, Frank Bardacke considers that "Perhaps we [the Left in the U.S.] might mimic Marcos and try to build a politics that bases itself (at least somewhat) on our mutual obligations and not exclusively on our sense of violated rights." The book is Shadows of Tender Fury: the letters and communiqués of Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation / translated by Frank Bardacke, Leslie Lopez and the Watsonville, California, Human Rights Committee ; introduction by John Ross ; afterword by Frank Bardacke, New York : Monthly Review Press, c1995. Bardacke's comments are on p. 254-255. Although large number of the texts in the book are formulated by the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee-General Command (CCRI-GC), the University of Wisconsin on-line catalog lists Subcomandante Marcos as the author. Even there, the importance of Subcomandante Marcos' figure rises above that of his commanders in the EZLN.
28. Cleaver, "The Zapatistas...", indicates that there are 147 of these free-net sites in the U.S., 25 in Canada, 8 in Europe, 2 in Australia, a lonesome one in the Third World, in the Philippines. This according to the National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN), a U.S. non-profit organization that coordinates efforts to generalize access to the Internet. Its address is http://www.nptn.org:80/about.fn/whatis.fn.
29. This is the case, for example, between those supporters of the Zapatistas who want the "politization" of the Zapatista Movement, its incorporation into the existing Mexican political structure, and those who push for an increased guerrilla warfare campaign that would ignite the whole of the nation.
30. See David Stanton, "Zapatistas Rebel on the Internet", The News Bit 1.1 (n.d.), at http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~rouzie/309mprojects/project4/news/newsproj/final_/zap-news.htm.
31. This quote and that which follows come from the introduction that Harry Cleaver has written to Zapatistas! Documents of the Revolution.
32. Jamie Heller and Drudge are quoted in Timothy Hanharahan, "What's News?", The Wall Street Journal, November 16, 1998: R36.
33. About the prevalence of icons in contemporary life, see Read Mercer Schuchardt, "Swoosh!: The Perfect Icon for an Imperfect Postliterate World," Utne Reader (September-October 1998): 76-77. Discussing the omnipresence of the Nike icon, the swoosh, Schuchardt comments that "A hyperlinked global economy requires a single global communications medium[: the icon]. . .The unfortunate result is that language is being replaced by icons."
34. See his "The Media Spectacle Comes to Mexico," New Perspectives Quarterly , 11.2 (Spring 1994): 59-61.
35. See Chiapas: La comunicación enmascarada..., 344-347.
36. Antonio García de León, "Identidades," La Jornada Semanal, September 21, 1997. Available at: http://serpiente.dgsca.unam.mx/jornada/1997/sep97/970921/sem-garcia.html.
37. Taken from ed. Marta Durán de Huerta, Yo, Marcos, Mexico D.F.: Ediciones del Milenio, 1994, 13.
38. See Cæsar Romero Jacobo, Marcos: ÀUn profesional de la esperanza?, Mexico, D.F.: Grupo Editorial Planeta, 1994, 44-45. Romero Jacobo, 47, argues that the original Marcos, a close friend of the now Subcomandante Marcos, died, and the Subcomandante, "in a personal homage to his close friend," adopted his name.
39. Alain Touraine, "Marcos: el demócrata armado", La Jornada Semanal, December 22, 1996, available at: http://serpiente.dgsca.unam.mx/jornada/1996/dic96/961222/sem-touraine.html.
40. Quoted in eds. John Holloway and Eloina Pelaez's "Introduction" to Zapatistas! Reinventing the Revolution in Mexico, to be published in London by Pluto Press. The complete text of the "Introduction is available at: http://aries.gisam.metu.edu.tr/chiapas/intro.html.
41. José Pablo Feinmann, "Guevara y Marcos", Página/12, August 22 1998. The article is available at: http://www.pagina12.com.ar/1998/98-08/98-08-22/contrata.htm.
42. Feinmann correctly indicates that for Guevara the take over of Power was imperative. Marcos, in contrast, does not advocate the transformation of the totality, because it is equivalent to Power, and Power, given its essence, becomes totalitarian. For texts dealing with the current importance of Che's image and meaning, see Manuel Vásquez Montalbán, "A treinta aóos de su muerte, el Che sigue siendo 'una pesadilla para el pensamiento œnico y el mercado œnico," Proceso, 1091 (September 28 1997), available at http://www.proceso.com.mx/1091/1091n26.htlm, and specially Che: a 30 aóos de su muerte, Cuadernos Africa América Latina, 29 (1997).
43. See his "The Subcomandante of Performance" in ed. Elaine Katzenberger, First World, Ha, Ha, Ha!: The Zapatista Challenge, San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1995, 89-96.
44. David Stanton, "Zapatistas Rebel on the Internet."
45. The document also describe that the so-called Rainbow Taskforce, a special body of the Mexican Army to combat the Zapatistas, existed at least since August 1994, more than a year before the press began to report about it. See Pascal Beltran del Rio, "97 Pentagon Documents, Declassified, regarding the conflict in Chiapas." This document is available at: http://ink.yahoo.com/bin/query?p=%22Pascal+Beltran+del+Rio%22&hc=0&hs=0.
46. See Michael S. Serrill, "Unmasking Marcos," Time 145.7 (February 20 1995): 62.
47. See, Gómez-Peña's "The Subcomandante of Performance," 90.
48. "The Subcomandante...", 94.
49. Nancy Schepper-Hughes, Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, 30.
50. Subcomandante Marcos, "Don Durito de la Lacondona", available at: http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/~zapatistas/durito.html.