Marcos: The anarchists say that we are anarchists...

Interviewers: No, we have never been able to say for sure [laughter]. We need proof. However, you have insisted that you are Zapatistas. Even now we remember the words of an EZLN Major who affirmed: We are not Marxists, nor are we guerillas. We are Zapatistas and we are an army. Anti- authoritarianism is felt in each of your words and actions, in the manner in which you are organized, in the structure of the Clandestine Committees, in the collective participation (within the EZLN). In Mexico, the only precedents for your actions and attitudes go back precisely to those whose names you constantly evoke: Zapata and Mago'n. Has Magonismo permeated your ideology?

Marcos: This is a question?

Interviewers: [laughter]. No, a presentation.

Marcos: I thought it was a speech.

Interviewers: No, no, a presentation.

Marcos: Well then, I'm going to explain. The EZLN was born having as points of reference the political-military organizations of the guerilla movements in Latin America during the sixties and seventies: That is to say, political-military structures with the central aim of overthrowing a regime and the taking of power by the people in general.

When the first group of the EZLN arrived here, to the jungles of Chiapas, it was a very small group with this political-military structure that I am talking about. It began to adapt itself to the surroundings, to try to survive - that is to say, to permeate the territory, to make it survivable. But, above all, it began to forge in the combatant, in that initial group of combatants, the physical and ideological strength needed for the guerilla process. I mean by this that the mountains served as a school for cadres, inflexible and constant day and night. But things were taking shape. In this period there weren't cameras, there weren't recorders, there wasn't any press, nor were there military actions. The only thing that lets you stick to the mountains and endure is hope, because there isn't any payment. I'm not referring to monetary payment, of course there never was any of that, but to some moral payment, to something that would serve as some sort of assurance that it is all worth it.

Ten years ago, we were clinging to the hope that everything that we were learning, with much suffering and many problems, was going to have results someday. In that period, there is a double learning process: the learning process of the mestizos (the inhabitants of this area call everyone who lives in the city mestizo) and the process of the indigenous peoples. The process of the indigenous people includes learning the very basics - to speak Castilian [Spanish], the history of Mexico, reading and writing, basic notions of mathematics, geography, biology, chemistry - in all, everything that we mestizos have as our basic culture. And we for our part had to learn and understand not only the world view of the indigenous peoples of this zone, but also learn a series of physical aptitudes that are not innate to the indigenous peoples, but that they learn when they are small: to handle a machete, to carry large loads over long distances, to reduce their food intake to the minimum required - in this case corn and sugar.

In this interplay, this exchange, this give and take, we both went to the mountains changed. What I mean is that for the indigenous people the mountains are something sacred, something special, something magical and ultimately something terrible. No, the indigenous peoples do not go to the mountains. In fact, when we entered the mountains, many of them feared that something would happen to them before they could accomplish anything. The mountains are the place of the dead, of the gods, of good gods and bad gods, and because of this there was nobody who had experienced, not even on their part, life in the mountains. The indigenous people were only used to living in their villages, to going hunting, to searching for land where they could plant. We should talk about this romantic vision, if you understand me, of guerilla war, with its references to grandiose military actions: the taking of power and triumph, all of those things that could be references to the triumphant guerilla wars of that era, the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions.

The environment brings you back to reality and makes you understand that all revolutions have a cost and only those who are disposed to pay it can carry out the revolution. To begin with, in that time you had to be crazy or stupid to try to carry it out. I think that we were both stupid and crazy. There was nothing that would tell us that we were fine and that the venture was going to have a future or that it had a chance. There was the fact that we had tried to bring about change - not necessarily revolutionary change - by other methods and in different places. But all our struggles, our struggles in the university, peasant struggles, workers' struggles collided with the State, with Power. It is better to speak about Power, because there are places in which the action of the State is not perfectly definable as such and it makes more sense to speak of Power - in this case, the Power of a dominant class that spreads to other areas, culture for example. Then you arrive at the conclusion, intuitively or scientifically, that another road is necessary, the road of armed struggle.

We then confronted the common belief that an armed revolution was possible in any country other than Mexico. That is to say, Mexico was considered the country of solidarity, but never the country of the revolution. When we proposed a revolution, we were considered heretics among the left. The left said that revolution wasn't Mexico's role, that we were too close to the United States, that the regime in Mexico resembled the European model and that because of this a revolutionary change was only possible by electoral methods, by peaceful methods, or, in the most radical scenario, by insurrectional methods. This means that the unarmed masses, with broad mobilizations, would disrupt the economy and create a crisis in the State apparatus, which would then fall and a new government would take power. When we proposed a guerilla war, an armed struggle, we broke with this tradition, a tradition that was very strong during that time. With what was happening in Nicaragua and what was beginning to happen in El Salvador, well . . . Similar things had always been happening there but they were becoming more intense. The struggle in Guatemala was rejuvenating itself a second time, a third, a fourth. I don't know. Eventually someone said, And why not here in Mexico? Immediately, there was a sense of caution, of prudence, as if to say, Not here; here our role is to help those peoples that are liberating themselves and only later, eventually, Mexico might aspire to revolution. The fact that we broke with this idea implies that we also broke with other theoretical schema.

We were always confronted with the mountains. Let's say we survived that first stage, that this first stage was in effect about two things: surviving and beginning our political work. In this initial political work, a connection began to take place between the proposals of the guerilla group, the initial group of the EZLN, and the communities. This means that there are different expectations of the movement. On one hand, there were those who hoped that armed action would bring about a revolution and a change of power, in this case the fall of the governing party and the ascension of another party, but that in the end it would be the people who took power. On the other hand, there were the more immediate expectations of the indigenous people here. For them, the necessity of armed struggle was more as a form of defense against groups of very violent, aggressive and powerful ranchers. In addition, there was an approaching storm - no, let's not say approaching storm - as if there was a wall, a wall that was the same mountain that separated the jungle from the city and that separated the indigenous peoples from political power.

It was this wall that permitted the EZLN to grow so scandalously without anyone realizing to what point it had grown. The indigenous peoples realized the necessity of learning to defend themselves. They had weapons, but they used them only for hunting or to protect their homes from animals or thieves. Then, we found each other and we began to speak in two different languages, but in this common point of necessity of armed struggle a relationship began to develop. They needed military instruction, and we needed the support of a social base. And we thus tried to convince them of the necessity of a broader political project. That didn't occur until elements of the community entered the army. In that moment, the difference between combatant force and civilian force began to disappear until it reached the point you see now when whole communities are Zapatistas, when there is no line that separates the civilians from the Zapatistas.

Then, when this began to occur, there began a confrontation, a relationship of convenience, between two ways of making decisions. On one hand, there was the initial proposal of the EZLN: a completely undemocratic and authoritarian proposal, as undemocratic and authoritarian as an army can be, since an army is the most authoritarian thing in this world and also the most absurd in that one single person can decide the life and death of his subordinates. On the other hand there was the indigenous tradition that before the Conquest was a way of life and that after the Conquest became their only way of surviving.

[... TBC]