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Zapatistas Call Shots in Tourism Wars

John Ross writes from San Cristobal, Mexico ,
***The failed uprising of the Zapatistas in southern Mexico struck a blow to the tourist industry — the mam breadwinner for the Chiapas' impoverished population. But now thousands of "social tourists' from US and Canada visit the site of the New Year Day rebellion.***
Tin; Mexican army officer shouted to the busload of North American visitors: "This is not a tourist zone.'
The tour of the concerned United States and Canadian citizens had been abruptly halted at the military checkpoint leading into the Chiapas jungle where the rebel Zapatista Army of National Liberation is baser!
The visitors, mostly elderly and church-affiliated, had come to Chiapas as representatives of Ecumenical Project on Central America and the Caribbean to interview victims of the Mexican army onslaught against civilian populations in the wake of the Zapatista uprising. Alleged atrocities had occurred on the lor^l people but the "social tourists were barred from visiting the rural communities.
The uprising has had a per-vr -rsc Impact on the tourist industry in Chiapas — the states second biggest breadwinner. The nosedive in business has been felt most profoundly in San Cristobal, the focal point of the New Year's Day uprising.
The handsome, colonial city, which was packed with holiday tourists on that day. has never recovered from the images of the uprising and the subsequent military, occupation. In San Cristobal, a third of the residents live on the tourist trade. In the past six months, according to the Chiapas state tourism chamber of commerce, cancelled reservations and empty restaurants. hal taken $8 million out of the town's economy.
The only bright spots for local hotels, taxi drivers, artisans. and newsboys had come at moments of high drama in the Zapatista saga such as February's peace talks when hundreds of reports, with open expense accounts, flocked to the city.
Indeed, the Zapatistas have called the shots in the Chiapas tourism wars. Many socially-concious groups visit the highlands to review human rights abuses and spend their money. Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based organisation that takes tourists on "reality tours" of Third World poverty for $1,000 a head, has conducted three "Insurrection In
Chiapas" eight-day excursions, filling a few hotel beds.
Oscar Barrera, a Mexico City student, asks $3 donations from the few European and North American tourists who venture through, conducting walking tours of uprising sites in and around San Cristobal.
The Zapatistas again showed their draw dictates the tourism tone in August when they summoned 6‘.000 social activists to San Cristobal for the "National Democratic Convention."
The convention, so-named for a 1914 meeting of the -forces of Emiliano Zapata and Francisco Villa in rebel-held
• territory during the Mexican revolution, was called just two weeks before the presidential elections and featured a much-heralded speech by the Zapatistas' star attraction. Subco-mandante Marcos, urging a peaceful, fraud-free election.
The convention-goers initiated work at various San Cristobal sites, filling the city’s hotels for the first time all year. Queues formed outside restaurants and taxi drivers could not keep pace with the demand.
Local artisans sold more souvenirs than they had for months. Their mainstay has been ski-masked "Mareos" dolls that come armed and wearing balaclavas, and "Com-andante Ramona" creations, honouring the women of the Zapatista high command. The Ramona doll Is often a carbon copy of Marcos, but with a skirt.
The highlight of the convention was the trip to the Jungle to see the Zapatistas. The largest motorised caravan in Chiapas memory — 240 buses and vehicles — was organised to transport 6,000 people, over 600 reporters, and hundreds of security and medical personnel down into the Lacandon Jungle, over muddy, often dangerous backroads.
The logistics of this locura (craziness) as Marcos dubbed it. were often devilish: the caravan tpok 24 hours to traverse less than 80 kilometres to the convention site.
Constant searches by security forces made the trip even more unpleasant for delegates.
observers, and journalists — many of them North Americans and Europeans.
Marcos was the star of the shd^. snapping photos with admirers from near and far. jousting for hours with the press, commanding snappy military displays by his troops, and. most of all. delivering an electrifying speech in which he concluded by giving the flag of the nation to Mexico's leading non-government defender of human rights and then dramatically vanishing into the night.
Soon after his disappearing act. a tropical storm crashed over the Jungle,, knocking out the electricity system and lifting the 3.000 meter tent — Marcos described it as "the sail" of his "ship" — from its moorings and bringing it down around the thousands of convention-goers in soft billows.
Hours of rain and knee1 deep mud created a sense of solidarity between dampened, conventioneers. The morning after the "great shipwreck" — as the press styled it — the convention resumed under the Jungle rays.
"Now we know what it is to be without a roof or clothes, food, or even a mirror — now we know what it is to be without a face (sin rostra — the Zapatista description of them1 selves)." intoned ex-Mexican Autonomous University rector Pablo Gonzalez Casanova, one of hundreds of notables selected to direct the convention.
Back in San Cristobal, after the abbreviated visit to the Jungle. 6,000 convention-goers seemed more exhilarated than discomforted by the adventure, piling Into the hotels and restaurants In force to shower and chow down before heading back to their homes.
"Marcos should call one of these conventions every week" gabbed a San Cristobal cabdriver. ironically named Marcos. The driver doubled his fares during the event, in an effort to make back what he said he had lost to the tourist downturn since the January 1st uprising. — GEMINI NEWS
JOHN ROSS Is an American poet, activist, reporter who has covered Mexico for more than two decades.