The Indigenous Rights Center (CEDIAC) in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, is demanding an investigation into the assassination of Tzeltal Maya campesino Sebastian Cruz Lopez, accused by state police of belonging to a gang which held up cars on the Palenque-Ocosingo highway, but according to witnesses killed at his home in front of his family in Chilon municipality. Another campesino was also said to be killed in the operation, and ten more imprisoned, including five minors. (La Jornada, June 3)

80,000 striking teachers marched in Oaxaca City June 2 to press their demands for better wages and a reorganization of the state's education system, marking the largest mass mobilization in the city's history. In addition to a large state police presence, a contigent of 500 elite Federal Preventative Police were dispatched to the city for the rally. (La Jornada, June 3) "The governor has sounded the drums of war, but we will not be intimidated," said Enrique Rueda Pacheco, secretary general of Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), speaking of Oaxaca's Gov. Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. (La Jornada, June 4)

It was heartening to see a picture of Subcommander Marcos in the New York Times May 10, even if it was on page 12. The masked Zapatista leader sat down in a Televisa studio for a nationally-broadcast interview May 9, as the political crisis sparked by violence at the village of San Salvador Atenco, just outside the capital, continued to escalate. Politicians of all stripes are baiting the rebel leader as a demagogue and extremist, even as the press continues to portray him as a washed-out has-been. Pretty funny. An excerpt from the Times story:

The conservative Baptist Press News (May 5) chalks this up (pretty damn blatantly) as a victory for a gringo pressure campaign. That spin will not serve Fox well, as a sudden upsurge of peasant and labor unrest is sending Mexico into crisis.

MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Vincente Fox, in a surprise reversal, announced he will not sign a drug bill legalizing possession of illicit drugs passed by Mexico's Congress five days earlier.

From El Universal, May 4 via the Chiapas95 archive:

A state judge on Wednesday exonerated a Michoacan police officer accused of shooting and killing a striking steel mill worker last month, despite video footage showing the officer firing his rifle toward the workers.

From the online Radio Sabotaje, late on May 5:

Marcos has just arrived in Atenco with 4,000 individuals representing students, workers, farmers, teachers and and community organizations. Mexican mainstream media is reporting agression on the part of the marchers - the truth appears otherwise. The Other Campaign will stay in Mexico City indefinitely. A peaceful meeting is scheduled in Atenco tomorrow at 12 noon.

Subcommander Marcos of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), speaking in Mexico City's historic Tlatelolco Plaza May 3, stated that the Zapatistas are officially going on "red alert" in response to violence in San Salvador Atenco, a village in the state of Mexico which has declared as a Zapatista-style "autonomous municipality." (Notimex, May 3) Later that night, six of 14 state and federal police officers detained by Atenco's rebel authorities, the Frente de Pueblos Unidos en Defensa de la Tierra, were released. News reports said they had been severely beaten. (APRO, May 4)

The Zapatista "Other Campaign" continues to advance through central Mexico, with recent stops emphasizing peasant ecological struggles. In Campos, Colima state, Delegate Zero (Subcommander Marcos) and other Zapatista leaders met with fishermen at Cuyutlán lagoon, whose livelihood is falling victim to environmental damage caused by the port’s thermoelectric plant. (La Jornada, April 1) In Michoacan, they met with Purepecha indigenous campesinos defending the local Lake Zirahuen from the real estate and tourism development that is encroaching from the nearby bigger Lake Patzcuaro. (La Jornada, April 5) Emulating the Zapatista rebel zones in Chiapas, the Purepecha have established a "Caracol in Rebellion of Lake Zirahuen." (Narco News, April 4) In Morelia, Michoacan's capital, Marcos called for a new "national force" to combat the neoliberal capitalist program, and affirmed that indigenous peoples are critical to "the possibility to build a different reality for our nation" because they have "another relation with nature." (La Jornada, April 3) The Other Campaign has just arrived in Ocotepec, Morelos, heartland of the original Zapatista insurgency (La Jornada, April 8)