THE BORDER REPORT

MEXICALI, B.C. – Subcomandante Marcos looks weary as he walks through a rabid crowd of supporters and reporters, the infamous pipe clenched in his teeth, tough, his heavily veined forearms belying his tiredness. But his eyes are drooping, his face lined, exhausted. Maybe he's had enough of this. Of course, it's been 12 years since his fighters took on the Mexican government and fought them to a standstill. He's outlasted two, arguably three, presidents now and there's no end in sight. When President Fox took office, he swore he'd take care of the Zapatistas within 15 minutes. But that was a sexenio ago and since then the beleagured president has had a hell of a lot more problems to take of. I don't think Felipe Calderon even mentioned the Zapatistas, which was probably wise considering how bad things turned out for his predeccesor. El Delegado Zero was scheduled to appear with a local village of indigenuous people just south of the U.S.-Mexico border. It was all part of of his famed La Otra Campaña, a sort of fact-finding mission the Zapatistas are putting on as they traverse Mexico meeting with – help me out here – indigenuous tribespeople? Indians? Native Mexicans? What do you call them? A room full of some 200 people cheered the man who let the local tribal officials speak first, sketching an angry portrait of how their government sells its electricity to the United States while people here "have to choose between keeping the lights on or eating." Marcos took a different stance, choosing to stand on the conference table "so those in the back can hear. It's what they came here for." Everything about the man exudes revolutionary, from his military garb to the pipe (maybe he's following General MacArthur) to the quiet, shoulder-shrugging manner he addresses the room full of black-clad young punks, wannabe anarchists and oval-eyed dark-skinned Indians who've followed him for this latest campaign. He starts with the story of another Indian village near Tijuana that protested a cellphone tower they feared would fall on their heads while they slept. "We know these things cause tears and headaches, but the government denies these things," he says in that soft tone he carries a room with. "Then we found out a colony of rich people had the tower in their neighborhood and told the government to move it," he said. "And bueno, that's how these people ended up with the dangers of the tower near their homes." That little tale brought down the house, but the Subcomandante was just getting warmed up, turning his attention to attack Andrés Manuel Lopez Obradór. "He's going to say that it was ELZN who caused his party's loss in Tabasco but that is not the truth. We were up here in Baja California, Tabasco is on the other side of the country," he said. Last week, the losing presidential candidate was dealt another crushing defeat in his home state. But you're not going to see much of this televised in Mexico's national media. What you'll see instead is a cooked-up scheme to provoke a fight with the ELZN by television reporters and cameramen from the local TV Azteca station. Before Marcos even arrived, the media was already waiting for him. About a minute before his van pulled up, his followers formed a human chain to act as a chute for Marcos to walk through. A TV Azteca reporter elbowed one of the women in the chain then started yelling at the followers that they were interfering with the "liberty of the press." The embarassment grew worse as the reporter slapped one of the volunteers in the face, still yelling about "freedom" and "trying to stop us from doing our job." A Televisa reporter joined the yelling Azteca reporter and for a moment, the mob grew ugly, people yelling, pushing, cameramen using their cameras as battering ram to break through the chain as Marcos walked through. I watched Azteca's news story later, it turns out they filed assault charges against the ELZN and labeled their broadcast: "Anarchists attack the Media."