FROM AN ANTI-AUTHORITARIAN PERSPECTIVE: INTERVIEW WITH INSURGENT SUBCOMMANDER MARCOS OF THE ZAPATISTA NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY (EZLN) By Bill Weinberg

What kind of support do you need from your sympathizers in the United States? What should we be doing?

Well, we have a lot of necessities here because the federal army has surrounded us. For our troops, that is not a problem, but the civilian population here is suffering a lot. They lack necessities like food, clothes, medicine. Even the children. Our people, the civilian people here, cannot go to the city to buy such necessities, because the federal army can take them prisoner and "disappear" them. So our people are under very strong conditions of war, even if it is not one of bullets and guns now, but the "dirty war" that the government is making against us. The only chance that we have is support from other people, from Mexico, and from Mexicans in other parts of the world. I mean, we know that in the States there are a lot of people whose families are Mexican Indian people ...

But what about anglos and other folks who aren't Mexican or Indian who support the struggle? What can we do?

We have a lot of necessities. The first concerns the federal government--the government of Salinas. They have made a big lie about our country. They say that our country is free, without serious economic or social problems, a good partner for the NAFTA. His government is making a big publicity campaign for other people in other parts of the world, principally the Unites States. So it is imperative for us that the world know that Mexican people, especially Indian people, are not in the life condition that Salinas says--as you can see in this trip that you have made here. We need people in the Unites States to create counter-propaganda to that of the Mexican federal government, and get out the truth, against the lie of Salinas.

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