SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS (Aug 11th) As the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) approaches the tenth anniversary of its historic January 1st, 1994 uprising that sent shockwaves throughout the Americas and beyond, the largely Mayan Indian rebels have declared dramatic changes in the internal and external organization of their civil forces. In a series of nine communiques published between July 22nd and August 1st, the Zapatistas' charismatic if elusive spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos laid out innovations designed to strengthen the autonomous structure the EZLN is building in the jungle and highlands of southeastern Chiapas in defiance of the Mexican congress's mutilation of an Indian Rights law signed by the rebels and the representatives of then-president Ernesto Zedillo in 1996 that would have granted limited autonomy to the nation's 57 distinct Indian peoples.

In addition to detailing the restructuring of the autonomous territories, now grouped together in the "MAREZ" or "Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities", Marcos's communiques ranged in subject from the recent national mid-term elections ("the most comical in Mexican history") to the size of his penis to his imminent debut as a short-wave (49 band 5.8 megahertz) deejay. The Subcomandante's epistolary outburst represents a rare talkative moment for the rebels who broke off all communication with the government of Vicente Fox in April 2001 following the cancellation of the Indian Rights law, and have been mostly silent since. Although largely displaced from public attention by international events like the War on Terror and Bush's brutal invasion of Iraq, the EZLN continues to galvanize interest, particularly among young people who were in their early teens when the rebellion exploded in the first hour of the North American Free Trade Agreement ten years ago.

To this effect, several thousand members of what the EZLN terms "civil society" braved the mountain rains and mud to journey to the Oventic ejido above San Cristobal de las Casas this August 8th-10th (the birthdate of EZLN namesake Emiliano Zapata) to celebrate what Marcos described as a "funeral" for the system of the "Aguascalientes" or cultural centers that have been the rebels' most public outpost. Paradoxically for the calendar-conscious Zapatistas, the event also marked the ninth anniversary of the establishment of the first Aguascalientes deep in the Lacandon jungle at Guadalupe Tepeyac during the "National Democratic Convention" - the "Aguascalientes" drew its name from the central Mexican state where revolutionary martyrs Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata coalesced forces at the original National Democratic Convention in 1914.

The Aguascalientes at Guadalupe Tepeyac was destroyed by the military during a 1995 invasion ordered by Zedillo to capture the Zapatista leadership and take back liberated territory - but five new Aguascalientes promptly blossomed in each of the Zapatista zones of influence at La Realidad, the Ejido Morelia, Roberto Barrios, La Garrucha, and Oventic. The latter, the site of the August meet, is perhaps the most prosperous of the centers and now features a clinic, a secondary school, a library, a tortilla factory, a well-stocked general store, and even a new church. Many of the public works have been built with seed grants and the sweat labor of national and international non-government organizations. The EZLN refuses to accept money from the "mal gobierno" ("bad government.")

Now, explains Subcomandante Marcos, waxing metaphoric, the "Aguascalientes" will be transformed into "caracoles" or "spirals." The change is not just in name. In MesoAmerica, the "caracol" is a powerful icon of the renewal of life - "caracoles" are also conch shells utilized for millenniums in indigenous communities to call the villagers together.

In one recent communique, Old Antonio, the wise, grizzled farmer who sometimes shows up in Marcos's narratives (this is his first appearance in more than two years) spins a creation myth in which the first Mayan gods, "the sustainers of the world", carried caracoles in their hearts. The caracol is "what enters the heart from the outside and what leaves the heart to travel in the world." Similarly, Marcos writes that the former Aguascalientes are now "doors for those from outside to enter the communities and for the communities to enter the outside world." The changes in the EZLN structure were the focus of intense discussions on-going in the five Zapatista zones since last January 1st when 20,000 rebels marched on San Cristobal to signal a renewal of their struggle after months of silence. Marcos describes many midnight meetings in humble huts throughout the Zapatista geography to thrash out consensus. The reorganization is as practical as it is conceptual. In a real sense, the success of the Aguascalientes spelled their demise. Because the five centers were closer to the roads and more accessible to the NGOs and civil society volunteers, they flourished - but often at the expense of back country, but no less Zapatista, autonomous municipalities. The healthy returns from organic coffee sales to U.S. and European fair traders has also deepened the gap between Zapatista "haves" and "have-nots." Indeed, the Subcomandante was particularly critical of NGOs that develop "special relations" with the councils that serve the autonomous municipalities, claiming that such attentions extended privilege and lent themselves to "corruption" that is expressed in the disequality in goods, services, and infrastructure between the ex-Aguascalientes and the outlying villages. The EZLN's 38 self-declared "autonomias" are each served by an autonomous council with no over-all authority until now to coordinate between them and avert conflict. The disequalities between the center and the periphery have long been at the core of the Zapatista struggle, both the discrepancies between an all-powerful federal government in far-off Mexico City and rural Chiapas, as well as between the larger cities in the state and the Indian countryside. Mexican states are organized into municipalities, roughly equivalent to U.S. counties, and the county seats - the "cabeceras" - traditionally dominate the satellite communities where the EZLN has always had strength. Significantly, the EZLN attacked five "cabeceras" January 1st 1994 to launch their long-lived rebellion. Within the Zapatista context, the Aguascalientes were at risk of becoming new "cabeceras."

Under jeopardy of biting the hand that feeds the insurgency, Marcos severely chastised those NGOs and civil society volunteers who continue to treat the Indians as objects of "limosnas" (charity.) Studiously avoiding naming names, the Sup charged "outsiders" with dictating what the Zapatista communities needed without consultations with the locals - "they give us a library where we don't have drinkable water...or an herb garden before we have a school..." Marcos complained of rooms full of broken computers and medicines whose cancellation dates have elapsed. Clothes donated to the Zapatista communities are so "extravagant they can only be used in stage plays" - the Subcomandante says he carried a single donated rose-colored high heel shoe (size six and a half) in his pack to contemplate such "humiliation." "We appreciate that you risk much by visiting us but we will not be treated like the mentally ill." The August meeting is expected to transform ties between the EZLN and the national and international NGO community, considers Peter Brown whose "Schools for Chiapas" program has built three "educational centers" (for which Brown was deported from Mexico under Zedillo) and this summer is sponsoring bicycle repair workshops at the ex-Aguascalientes to upgrade the mobility of Zapatista health and education workers. Finally, to establish a more equitable distribution of goods and services between the "caracoles" and the back country "autonomias", each zone is to establish a "House of Good Government" (as opposed to the "mal gobierno") where representatives of the region's autonomous councils will meet to hash out differences. One example of how this might involve NGO commitments and mitigate disparities in development: when an NGO proposes projects for specific communities, they first must be approved by Committees of Good Government and 10% of the seed money is deducted for projects in less-favored autonomias. The Committees of Good Government are responsible only to the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee (CCRI), the EZLN's maximum decision-making body, and represent a regional (rather than a municipal) authority for the first time in the rebels' ten year history.

Indeed, the changes in EZLN structure represent a qualitative step forward in the consolidation of regional autonomy as contemplated in the rejected Indian Rights accords and, as usual, the rebels move indefiance of congress, the government, and the political parties. The announcement of the establishment of Committees of Good Government was frowned upon as much by the administration of President Vicente Fox as the Zapatista project was by his predecessors in the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI.) Fox's Secretary of the Interior Santiago Creel cautiously warned the rebels of the consequences of establishing what looks more and more like a parallel authority, and San Cristobal bishop Felipe Arizmendi barred his priests from attending the rebel celebration at Oventic because he considered it " too political.":

In a ploy reminiscent of Zedillo, Fox's director of Indian affairs Xochitl Galvez declared the weekend of the Zapatista conclave "Indian Rights" day in a media-oriented effort to steal the EZLN's thunder. Some invoke the phantom of Indian "secession", a pretext seized upon by Ernesto Zedillo to veto the rights accords. Jorge Melendez, a political commentator associated with both the resuscitated PRI and Mexican security agencies, bemoans the establishment of a "liberated zone" under Zapatista control as "a grave violation of the constitution."

In response, Chiapas governor Pablo Salazar, a former PRIista himself, defends the new Zapatista project: "no way of governing that seeks to improve the lives of the indigenas of the jungle and the highlands can be illegitimate."