Weekly Report - 29 July 2003

'Subcomandante Marcos', the leader of Mexico's Zapatista rebels, has reappeared announcing a major shift in the strategy of his movement, just shy of 10 years old, which entails adopting 'resistance' as its chief form of struggle and waiting no longer for the government and congress to revise the indigenous rights legislation. The 30 'autonomous municipalities' in the Zapatista area of influence in the southern state of Chiapas will put into effect the system of government envisaged in the San Andrés Larraí­nzar Agreements of 1996, signed by the Zapatistas and the government but later, in the Zapatista view, bowdlerised by the legislators. 

The Zapatista municipalities, he said, will set up an 'autonomous regional palace' as their overall government.