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When Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos rolls toward the coastal Caribbean state of Quintana Roo on Saturday, January 14, he’ll be making a pilgrimage that most of the more than 800,000 citizens of this young state – or their parents – made over the past three decades. The majority of the people in this state are migrants. Previously a sparsely populated territory of the Mexican Republic – home to Maya indigenous, farmers and fishermen – a population explosion began the 1970s when the national government decided to turn a sleepy coconut plantation into the international tourist Mecca of Cancún, and converted Quintana Roo into the 31st state. Back then, Cancún counted with 173 citizens. Today the city’s population is half a million plus 27,000 hotel rooms. Those resorts, the shopping malls, restaurants and nightclubs, were constructed and staffed by immigrants from throughout southern Mexico. Many of these workers came from the same land from where Marcos steps out this week: he is only the latest pilgrim to travel the hot, dusty road from Chiapas to Quintana Roo. Here, Marcos will see it all: huge tourist resorts near impoverished farming and fishing communities, ritzy condos a golf ball’s toss from block housing and tarpaper shacks, migrant workers and relative newcomers alongside traditional Maya indigenous campesinos, greedy developers and usurpers confronted by landless migrants who have organized to invade unused terrains and build homes upon them, natural beauty next to environmental destruction and people in struggle fighting to preserve the land and shore. Simple and humble people who fight can be found throughout Mexico, but this is a province where their ranks grow daily. During the four-day visit here by the Zapatista “Delegate Zero” – this Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, beginning in Chetumal – the Maya indigenous farmers of Nicolas Bravo and other towns will present him with the cane of leadership and join forces with the Zapatista “Other Campaign.” Working-class colonists of the Maya Riviera’s Colonia Colosio will ask him for help in their struggle to protect contested land titles from a state government bent on displacing them to make room for wealthy developers. Young people from Cancún will explain their problems – from economic hardship to police repression – to the Subcomandante and will offer their hand in constructing a new way to take political action in what the Zapatistas propose will be a national anti-capitalist campaign, “from below and to the left.” Perhaps even an international tourist or two will come to snap a postcard of the masked Subcomandante and the crowds he is likely to draw: “Vivir Delay-gay-to Zee-roh!” There will certainly be sideshows along the route, but this tour ain’t no Spring Break. More

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BE SEEN!