What made the Subcommand Marcos stay aside?
 Fernando Berlín the author of this blog, is the director of Radiocable.com and participates in various media in Spain.
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??The spine is not the Subcommand Marcos, is the indigenous movement.? Those words were said by a person real close to him, when I asked if a certain orphan like sensation existed among Zapatistas?? due to the consisted silence of the Subcommand Marcos. She said no, and until Jose Saramago came out in my defense: ??When one has an admiration for somebody and this one tends to be silent, of course one can feel like a orphan!.? It was in Madrid, in 2004.
In a way, that mysterious woman was right and three years after the conversation, Marcos confessed in an interview in the jungle ??the last that is known- ??the doubt that sometimes torments me: was Marcos a mistake that is now costing us the Zapatismo??
I am not really sure what goes through the Subcommand??s head to move aside, since I haven??t been able to even get close to the smell of his pipe. However, it is not difficult for me to imagine that this absence is completely coherent with every single one of his messages.
The Subcommand Marcos is an icon who has never cared to take off his mask, because with it, he represents the indigenous, the weak, the oppressed, the invisible in front of the public. Because of this, even though the Mexican government tried to spread his identity, they realized that his followers did not loose their breath away. They looked at his photo with boredom, and even, I am sure, they laughed ??he is better looking with his mask on.? Because their were many followers, intellectuals, and journalists, who knew of his previous name and surprisingly, they were never left speechless by his identity: they preferred the Subcommand Marcos, and what he represented to those who had nothing.
With his strong philosophical, poetic and pacifistic speech, and thanks to his mask, the Subcommand has been able to invest the relationship that has been established between ??speaking without a mask? and honestly.
The greatest honesty of Marcos is that he did not take off his mask for such a long lasting time. By him stepping aside, he avoids being perpetuated as an icon of power, and delivers the witness to his town.
I am sure that this decision has taken him many, many hours of thought. But he commits an error, in my opinion, because Marcos?? figure has transcended. And the Zapatistas feel like orphans, yes, for the entire planet.
Children loose their parents. If they are lucky, they loose them when they are adults, not when they are children. It is not the parents that leave their children aside. They shouldn??t. Because the sons will begin to protect themselves from their parents. And believe me, this is a topic that is not pleasant to the parents. But this is nature and not the other.
But the Zapatistas must not fear. Today his message seems to extinguish like a candle but one must ask himself about the kind of material that is being supported. Just in case, that instead of burning off, the contrary occurs and we see a never ending fountain of light.
20 and 10.
