Zapatista leader Subcommander Marcos told the Spanish TV show "El Loco de la Colina" in a special broadcast Mexico City that it is "possible to build another Latin America" based in popular movements and new political actors emerging in the region, especially "those lead by indigenous peoples, as is the case in Bolivia and Ecuador."

"Governments come and go, the peoples remain," Marcos said, while saying it was still possible to have "just, democratic governments that promote freedom," and then build "a new relationship with Europe, the United States or Asia." He criticized Mexico's politicas as "a monologue of many voices" and the country's politicians as "comedians whose time is up."

He also distinguished between the violence of "those elements that surge from below," which recurs because "we don't find other paths... indigenous peoples do not find a place for our word and our face." He said it was necessaru to differentiate "the violence produced by desperation from that realized from above by those seeking to conquer."

He said the Zapatista movement is trying to build a new relationship with civil society. "Our proposal is to build a single island, so it will not be necessary to have two watches." (MexicoXXI, June 15)

He also assumed responsibility for EZLN mistakes which resulted in "death, not only of some compañeros in the uprising of 1994, but of some children who followed us in the 10 years of the uprising, as well as some other errors of the movement."

He also commented again on the Baque conflict in Spain, saying the recent ceasefire with the separatist group ETA, a model for a solution "not with force or with arms, but with arguments, is a hope for us because we also come from a broken dialogue."

While he acknowledged the possibility that the authorities could arrest him any minute, he denied being afraid of being assassinated. (El Universal, June 14)

Sources archived at Chiapas95.

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