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Response

Despite the Mexican government’s attempts to make the EZLN’s rebellion seem like a parochial movement exclusive to Chiapas, it has received much international attention. One potential reason for this is perhaps the EZLN’s use of the internet. Since the beginning of their struggle, the Zapatistas have employed cyberactivism, allowing for rapid and widespread dissemination of information and thereby opening channels for international support. The internet in many ways has brought much attention to the EZLN’s cause. Talk of the EZLN has come out during several foreign policy discussions, including free-trade agreement negotiations with the EU and talks with human rights officials at the UN. Both French President Jacques Chirac and Pope John Paul II mentioned the conflict in Chiapas on their trips to Mexico. In Rome, 50,000 people took to the streets for a solidarity march. It has become clear that this is a matter that can’t be easily downplayed.
Welcome rally in Zocalo Plaza during Zapatista visit in 2001
  Since the emergence of the EZLN, Mexico’s self-reported Indian population has doubled from 10 million to 20 million in the past ten years. Only 17% of polled Mexicans see the situation in Chiapas as simply local, while a statistically significant majority thought it had serious national repercussions. However the population is split over whether or not the EZLN reasonably represent the indigenous people of Mexico: 44% thought it did, 40% thought it did not. Nonetheless, in the same survey, conducted by the Rosenblueth Foundation, statistically significant majorities among respondents believed that the indigenous peoples of Mexico had valid reasons to rebel against the federal government in 1994; and that since the rebellion, the federal government had failed to better conditions for indigenous peoples, and had not done enough to establish peace. When President Zedillo sent military forces to capture Subcommander Marcos and other Zapatista leaders in 1995, Mexico City’s Zolcalo’s plaza was filled with Mexican citizens opposing his decision. Later, when Zedillo revealed Subcommander Marcos to be a non-Indian university professor, Mexicans responded with the rallying cry: “We are all Marcos.”

Zapatistas arriving in Mexico City in 2001