Who Is This Subcommandante Person Anyway?

Subcommandante Marcos does not support Lopez Obrador because he believes the socialist candidate for the presidency of Mexico to be to conservative.

Subcommandante Marcos travels around Mexico on a motorcycle bicycle. Years ago, this would not have meant anything to any American (in Mexico, we are "estadounidenses," because Mexicans are Americans too.) Now, because of the movie The Motorcycle Diaries, a generation of estadounidenses will know what Marcos--the man in the wool mask--means.

Subcommandante Marcos believes that all Latin American governments, including the government of Hugo Chavez is a scam. He believes that these left-wing dictators have failed to deliver on what they have promised. The subcommandante (literally translated: Undercommander) desires that all natural resources be nationalized. He is opposed to privatization of Mexico's oil fields.

I doubt that Subcommandante Marcos is proud to be from the same country as the world's richest man.

Subcommandante Marcos is a ghost. He wears a black mask. His first name "Subcommandante" is an impersonal title. His last name merely means "Mark," the name of the traveling companion of St. Paul and St. Barnabas who refused to travel to Perga. He cared more for this life than his cause, at that time anyway.

Subcommandante Marcos no longer has an identity. Not one that can be put on paper or official documents. A rifle is always strapped to his back. A pipe protrudes from his mask. It might be part of his face, or maybe he breaths through it.

One wonders what Subcommandante Marcos is doing when he writes collections of fables and children's stories (one was published by the Lannan Foundation). Not long ago he tried writing a crime novel. A reviewer said that his co-writer was a lot better. He belongs to an outdated age, but I am told that women still find his mask to be cool. He is not a man of practical communism. He is the sort of mystic who still has faith without the religion. The others--Castro, Chavez, Obrador--learned, a long time ago, to endorse the religion without the faith. If there is one thing that is known, it is that people, whether directly or indirectly, die because of both types of men.