Zapatista leader 'Subcomandante Marcos' bows out

Twenty years after leading a peasant uprising in southern Mexico, the balaclava-clad, pipe-smoking Subcomandante Marcos, who captured the world's attention with his crusade for indigenous rights and belts of bullets strung across his fatigues, says he is bowing out as figurehead of the National Zapatista Liberation Army (EZLN).

But a speech to supporters in the early hours of Sunday sowed confusion as to whether a poet philosopher once painted as a kind of Mexican Che Guevara was really bidding adios, or whether he was simply reinventing himself once again.

In a speech posted on a Zapatista website, the self-styled "stainless steel subcommander" said he no longer spoke for the EZLN, and that the rebel army's leadership had decided that "Marcos will no longer exist".

Appearing in public for the first time in five years, "Marcos" denied rumours that he had been ill, but said Marcos was "a hologram" and "the leadership change . . . is the logical consequence of the internal changes that the EZLN has had and is having".

But "Marcos" - considered the nom de guerre of Rafael Sebastian Guillen Vicente - said his place would be taken by "Rebel Subcomandante Galeano" in homage to a comrade, Jose Luis Solis Lopez, whom a rights group says was killed earlier in May by rival militants and political opponents.

According to the transcript of the speech, an offstage voice told the crowd after concluding his address: "My name is Galeano. Rebel Subcomandante Galeano".

Marcos said the rebels saw Galeano's death as "those from above wanting to murder the EZLN", so the dead comrade had been "disinterred". It had been decided that "when Galeano was reborn, it would be collectively".

The text of Marcos' speech was signed off "Rebel Subcomandante Marcos", but after the fragments of dialogue from the unidentified offstage voice, the communique was finally signed "Rebel Subcomandante Galeano".

Marcos, who sprang into the limelight at the helm of an uprising in the southern state of Chiapas on January 1 1994 - the day the North American Free Trade Agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico took effect - has reinvented himself before. In 2006, he reappeared as "Delegate Zero".

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