Report: Marcos Appears in Public, Criticizes López Obrador

SAN RAFAEL, Mexico, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Masked rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos emerged from the jungle for the first time in four years on Saturday to castigate Mexico's political parties as "shameless scoundrels," and said he would back none, including the leftist favorite, in the presidential election.

Zapatista rebel leader Marcos' appearance at a meeting of activists in southern Mexico's Chiapas state seemed to be aimed at reclaiming a political role for the rebels before the election next July.

Smoking his trademark pipe, the enigmatic leader said the Zapatistas would not back any of the presidential candidates.

"They'll pay for everything they have done to us. They are a bunch of shameless scoundrels," Marcos said from behind the black ski mask he has worn in public since the Zapatistas first burst from the jungle in 1994.

"The decomposition of the political class is so great that we can do nothing," said Marcos, who earlier cracked jokes with activists in this town close to Ocosingo, a center of the Zapatista rebellion.

He reserved special ire for presidential front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and a member of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution, calling him a false leftist.

"They say, 'Maybe Lopez Obrador doesn't steal.' But his team has shown its ability and appetite to do so," Marcos said.

In a video widely broadcast last year, one of Lopez Obrador's closest advisors was secretly filmed accepting money and stuffing a briefcase full of cash.

From the jungle stronghold where the Zapatistas have hidden since hopes for peace talks collapsed in 2001, Marcos has said the rebels will embark on a cross-country, preelection tour aimed at uniting workers, students and activists around a leftist agenda...

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Here are some excerpts, translated to English..

The following words are quoted from Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos:

"We want to thank those of you who have come. In the first place because the relationship between the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN in its Spanish initials) and political organizations of the left has been bad, fundamentally because of our stubbornness and inexperience beginning on January 1, 1994 for heating up what was the national atmosphere and the work that these organizations were doing. However, at no moment have we questioned the legitimacy of what you all have won...

"The majority of organizations of the left present here have an important job, a work at the grassroots. You have our guarantee that we recognize this work. Not only are we going not going to question it: we are going to recognize it publicly.

"We know that you run risks for coming here, because as it is often said, the EZLN continues being a politico-military organization and lives under different kinds of threats. What is it that they call 'a state of law'? We know that the come here or to establish a relationship with us implies a risk: I believe that all the organizations present here are conscious that we are going to face a very intense campaign to discredit us, more than even what the strike movement at the UNAM (national university) received against it in 1999, and I am sure that there are many betting that we are going to fail, that 'any effort to make agreements with the left is destined for failure, by definition.' We are ready to fail, as we already failed in our relations with the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), with the movement of Cardenas, and with certain sectors that we call progressives.

(The Sixth Declaration) "proposes your direct participation and in equality of circumstances with us in the planning and realization of the Other Campaign. We are not thinking about an action such as the caravan of the 1,111 (in 1997), or the 1999 plebescite, nor the (2001) indigenous dignity caravan. We are thinking about political work to counter-act the plan of a decade - if it turns out being less, we will give our all. In this sense, although it is presented in front of the electoral calendar of 2006, what the EZLN proposes in the Other Campaign goes further, not only in its political proposals but also in its calendar. In spite of the fact that the EZLN goes out and returns when there are elections, an intermission can be made in which they are voters, and will continue the work that is independent of the electoral process.

"We will not be afraid of anything, truthfully, except for this: What we are not going to permit is that you be dishonest with us, because we have been honest with you. Beginning today we are going to share everyting with you: If Fox proposes speaking with us, you are going to know it. If Marta Sahagun wants the Other Campaign to support her, you are going to know it. In this sense, anything that could be maintained at a secret level we are going to share it with you and we are going to tell you what is our position. You're probably not used to that, but what the Sixth Declaration says is what it says, there will not be any other thing hidden..."

Bellinghausen reports that at this first of six meetings, 30 political organizations of the left were present, plus foreign observers, plus a couple of dozen EZLN members of the organizing committee for the Other Campaign, amounting to about 200 participants:

"...impatient and disenchanted youth, and also union members from the Social Security department, Pujiltic, the May First Union, various socialist collectives, Rebeldia magazine, Reflections in Action, the Zapatista, Socialist and People in Defense of the Land in Chalco Fronts, the unregistered political parties PRT, POS, the Communists, PPS (aha!) and the Revolutionary Left Force of the People, and the movements of San Salvador Atenco, the Everything for Everybody House of Culture in Juarez City, and the Reclaim the Streets network."

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