Ross, whose stirring pieces on the history of the conflict have added a valuable light to the issue, in this case appears to jump on an evolving ''left'' bandwagon which has whined for some time now about the EZLN's refusal to adhere to dogma about armed struggle.
The governing body of the EZLN has the word ''clandestine'' in it. While most clandestinity is popularly interpreted as Jacques Clouseau in a trenchcoat (maybe it's just a ski-mask?), for the EZLN it means that the dimensions of its military force remain hidden and intricately tied to its political force; one force must counterweigh the other, depending on the time and circumstance, and political parameters. One of the favorite pastimes of the left has now become second-guessing the EZLN's next step militarily (from an armchair of course. They prefer to march in an army of rhetoric which bristles with militance, but which has, for the most part, bored the ''masses'' in whose name the revolution is to occur).
Like the left, top military officials in both Mexico and the U.S. also have an intense curiosity about the military strength of the EZLN. For them however, the military capacity of the EZLN is a question of the life and death of their global plan. What in hell will they do with this tenacious little blotch on their global plan called the EZLN, if they can politically and successfully call it into question? Why should they abandon a 50 year, global, multi-level strategy of ''modernization'' when the EZLN has not yet consolidated the political force to shred it?
The powerful prefer that this peace accord remain on ''paper''. The hard-won lesson in Vietnam was that they must at all costs retain that key political terrain that sustains the idea that armed force for the dispossessed is a vile ''transgression of the law'' and ''legal'' and ''moral'' only for those who rule the world. Better to sign papers and invest lots of money and people in precisely accounting for military strength while simultaneously disabling political influence. Better to appear the peacemakers, than to acknowledge the fact that their political dominance has been so eroded that only military force can keep them in place. For the powerful, civilians and civil society are shrubbery and trees to be neutralized, cleared away, or murdered, when it can be done without political consequences. The strategy of low-intensity warfare necessarily responds to this dynamic correlation between military and political force.
The powerful continue to ask themselves, can these ''dumb little Indians'' manage to survive and even thrive right under their noses, at a moment in history when the left was becoming a good ally by being unable to agree about what can be built in place of multi-national domination? Will the EZLN fight, how well will they fight? What is the strength of the Mexican military? Can they hold back civil unrest in the rest of the country?
The powerful now pour millions into disabling the EZLN politically because they know they must destroy this force before they can tackle them militarily. Meanwhile, in the U.S., Pat Buchanan is a rising symbol of dissatisfaction with corporate power because he fills a void left by an unimaginative opposition whose radical proposals never went further than corporate reforms. And in Mexico, Zedillo is so weak he is precisely forced to ''ballyhoo'' the peace accord, because he has little else to legitimize his rule. Unable to discern this delicate and radical shift of power and acknowledge the EZLN, Ross, in his infinite wisdom resorts to taunting them with epithets of cowardice and a ''brainy troupe of agitprop players who toy with their guns''.
Here's a flash, John. Sure Mexican civil society wants peace. At the same time, they want the EZLN to continue to exist, and to be a presence on the national political scene. While they know how to mobilize for peace, they're not so sure what the road to change looks like, they may not even yet believe it is possible. Until those national proposals for change arise and are given life by an organized political and social base, which really works, it does the EZLN little good to ''bask'' in political purity by constantly rejecting all government offers because they are incomplete.
Sure the Chontales in Tabasco, the militant bus drivers in Mexico City, the political ''hostages'' held as bargaining chips over the EZLN's head, and the Zapatista communities (does Ross imply they don't know what they voted for?) have a right to question the signing. But, geez, they can speak for themselves. They must, if the EZLN is to increase its political potency. In order to win rights to land and autonomy, the EZLN doesn't need to shoot off its weapons, it needs millions of others to demand them, to question the legitimacy of Zedillo's rule and the idiocy of free-market politics. This is what gives any armed force potency.
So how about John writing an analysis of the EZLN's proposal for ''deconstructing power from below'', or a scathing critique of the CIA's intense interest in dismantling the opposition? How about a healthy, well-grounded article about what a just global economic system should look like? Perhaps this will alleviate some of John Ross's frustration. Then again, maybe he's fallen victim to low-intensity warfare and can't grasp the concept of resistance.