MEXICO CITY WELCOMES ZAPATISTA REBELS Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Copyright 1997 by Reuters Fri, 12 Sep 1997 22:40:24 PDT MEXICO CITY (Reuter) - Hundreds of Zapatista guerrillas and tens of thousands of their supporters jammed Mexico City's central square Friday in a show of unexpected strength for the waning Indian rebellion. The mostly Mayan Indian rebels -- armed with roses and not guns -- capped a four-day, 750-mile trek from their jungle bases in southern Chiapas state to a spot where Aztec Indians once ruled most of pre-conquest Mexico. Shouts of ``Viva Zapata!'' -- after the movement's namesake and revolutionary hero Gen. Emiliano Zapata -- and ``You Are Not Alone'' greeted the rebels and fellow Indians from across Mexico as at least 40,000 people turned out for the rally. Zapatista Commander Claribel delivered a speech on behalf of charismatic guerrilla leader Subcommander Marcos blasting President Ernesto Zedillo for not making peace with the rebels, who first took up arms on New Year's Day 1994. ``If you can't keep your vows of peace, then wage war. At least you can fill with lead the void that your words leave,'' said Claribel, clad in the rebels' trademark ski-mask to hide her identity. Marcos and other key rebel leaders, fearing arrest by the government, stayed behind in their jungle hideaways near the Guatemalan border while their comrades embarked on their first mass journey outside Chiapas. Mexican authorities said their colleagues could come to the capital if they were unarmed. The final leg of the Zapatistas journey Friday through the southern part of Mexico City mirrored Zapata's triumphal entry into Mexico City during the Mexican Revolution in 1914. These rebels could not claim victory over government forces as Zapata's rag-tag army of peasants did then, but rather sought only to rekindle peace talks with the government and draw attention to their struggle. Nearly four years after they launched a rebellion that stunned Mexico, the Zapatistas have since been caught in successive rounds of negotiations with the government while the nation's attention has drifted. But their dramatic entry to Mexico City sparked the kind of revolutionary enthusiasm that followed the rebels' initial uprising -- even among the jaded residents of this huge city. ``It's the first time I had seen them. I had never thought much about them before, but this makes me realize they are right in their demands,'' Maria Luisa Paniagua, a maid who works at a local five-star hotel, told Reuters. Thousands of Indians from different states across Mexico -- including Nahuas from western Guerrero state and Mixtecs from southern Oaxaca state -- gathered in the city's main square. For some, it was their first time outside their native villages, where Spanish is often a second language. ``We are a fistful of Indians who live in a distant corner of Mexico. And here we are!'' Claribel said. Women, many barefoot, wore white dresses embroidered in pink, blue and orange flowers as they marched down the capital's smart Reforma avenue. The men, bordered on either side by marching bands, marched single file while a few dozen police stood by silently. Standing amid towering office buildings and streets thick with traffic and smog, the Indians looked more like something out of Mexico's past than citizens of an increasingly modern country that champions free-market economics. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-09.16.97-00:14:30-28887