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Marcos opts for peace

Mexico City: The pipe-smoking, balaclava-wearing, but no longer gun-toting leader of Mexico's Zapatista rebel group, subcomandante Marcos, emerged from his jungle hideout on Sunday for a six-month nationwide tour to promote a new, non-violent political movement. Latin America's best-known modern guerilla left the Zapatistas' base in Chiapas on a black motorcycle with a Mexican flag fixed to the back. The conflict in Chiapas has rumbled on with only occasional flare-ups, but no lasting resolution nor major improvements for Mexico's long-suffering indigenous population. In recent years the Zapatistas have kept to themselves, focused on setting up alternative local government structures in the territories they control. The authorities have largely ignored the rebels.. The aim of the tour is, according to a recent communique, to ``build a national programme of anti-capitalist and leftwing struggle.'' —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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