Marcos Novel — The Uncomfortable Dead

By Amanda Hopkinson  

This New Year makes 13 since the Zapatistas declared the vast tropical forests of Chiapas in south-eastern Mexico an autonomous region. There, among the Lacandon Indians, a rebel movement – which took its name from the indigenous leader of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, and its strategy from a purported young academic – declared its opposition to governmental corruption, economic globalisation and ecological destruction. Little was known about its leader, although an industry soon arose to manufacture a reputation.