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CORRECTED: Masked Mayan rebels greet leader near jungle ruin

Posted on: Wednesday, 4 January 2006, 00:56 CST

please read byline as ... By Manuel Carrillo ... , and in second paragraph ... pre-Columbian... .

A corrected repetition follows.

By Manuel Carrillo

PALENQUE, Mexico (Reuters) - Thousands of Maya Indians greeted Mexican rebel icon Subcomandante Marcos near the jungle ruins of Palenque on Tuesday, as he took off on a national tour to rail against poverty before July elections.

Groups of tourists watched the Mayan Zapatistas, who wore black ski masks and chanted pro-poor slogans as Marcos drove into Palenque, which is famous for its sprawling pre-Columbian ruins surrounded by thick forest.

The pipe-smoking and masked Zapatista leader emerged from his jungle stronghold on Sunday and traveled to San Cristobal, where the short but bloody guerrilla uprising began 12 years before.

He now plans to lead a tour to every Mexican state urging leftist groups to join a broad anti-capitalist front that aims to influence politics, though he will not seek office.

In Palenque -- where he arrived in a long convoy of Zapatistas, journalists and police and was greeted by about 6,000 supporters -- the apparently unarmed Marcos blamed Mexican poverty on corrupt politicians and called for grass roots activism.

"This all has to change, and not from above where the right-wing is spreading its lies, but from below and from the left," he said.

The Zapatistas burst from the jungle on New Year's Day in 1994, taking over towns and attacking police and army positions in Chiapas, Mexico's poorest state, in clashes that claimed about 150 lives.

Since a ceasefire shortly after the 1994 attack there has been little fighting, but Marcos' colorful Internet communiques have made him a hero of the global anti-capitalism movement.

The rebels are focused on building a rotating system of self-government at strongholds in Chiapas, with transportation, education and health services supported partly by funds from foreign nongovernmental organizations.

In 2001, the Zapatistas crisscrossed Mexico in a two-week tour to promote an Indian rights bill, but the subsequent legislation was watered down.

The decision to go back on the road came after agreeing they could only sustain their system of government and promote wider rights for Indians and the poor by joining with workers, peasants and students across Mexico's cities and countryside.

Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is the front-runner in the campaign for Mexico's July 2 election.

While many on the left want the Zapatistas to throw their influence behind Lopez Obrador, the rebels have branded him a fraud, saying his party would do little to help the poor.

Although Marcos declines to publicly remove his mask, the Mexican government has said he is really a non-Indian university professor born in northern Mexico.

Source: REUTERS

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