The pipe-smoking, balaclava-wearing, but no longer gun-toting leader of Mexico"s Zapatista rebel group, subcomandante Marcos, emerged from his jungle hideout yesterday for a six-month nationwide tour to promote a new, non-violent political movement.


Subcomandante Marcos, the leader of the Mexican Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), holds up his pet rooster before the start of a march in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas January 1, 2006, to mark the start of the "the other campaign". For the next 6 months the leaders of the EZLN will travel all over Mexico to try to galvanize support for their left wing agenda, finishing in June in Mexico City, just before the presidential election. REUTERS/Bernardo De Niz

Latin America"s best-known modern guerrilla left the Zapatistas" base in the southern state of Chiapas on a black motorcycle with a Mexican flag fixed to the back and headed for the mountain city of San Cristobal de las Casas, where hundreds of sympathizers had gathered for a rally to cheer him on.

The launch of the tour coincided with the 12th anniversary of the New Year"s Day uprising that put the ragtag indigenous Zapatista Army of National Liberation and their verbally stylish non-indigenous leader on the world map.

The conflict in Chiapas has rumbled on since then with only occasional flare-ups, but no lasting resolution nor major improvements for Mexico"s long-suffering indigenous population.

In recent years the Zapatistas have kept to themselves, focused on setting up alternative local government structures in the territories they control. The authorities have largely ignored the rebels as global attention shifted to more dramatic clashes elsewhere.

Marcos himself, whose irony, literary communiques and charisma once made him a guru of the post-modern left, also faded from view. Still hiding his identity behind a ski-mask, he seems intent on making a comeback and moving the Zapatistas into a new phase.

The aim of the tour is, according to a recent communique, to "build a national program of anti-capitalist and leftwing struggle". By dubbing his caravan "The Other Campaign", Marcos made it clear that much of the strategy hinges on rubbishing the July presidential election.

In a series of preparatory meetings in the jungle in August and September, Marcos reserved particular venom for the front-runner, Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador, calling him a traitor who would "give it to all of us" if he won. This alienated former fans in the intelligentsia who see Mr Lopez Obrador"s candidacy as an unprecedented opportunity for the left.

The government has made little comment on his tour plans. But should the authorities decide to arrest the rebel leader and outlaw, identified by the government in 1995 as former university teacher Rafael Guilln, Marcos instructed his supporters in a communique not to resist. "Run away and spread the word," he wrote, "and bring me tobacco."