The Zapatista "Other Campaign" is making its way up the Mexican isthmus. Leaving behind the Maya realms of Chiapas and the Yucatan, in recent weeks it has passed through the states of Tabasco, Veracruz and, most recently, Oaxaca. At each stop, Subcommander Marcos—dubbed "Delegate Zero" for the tour—met with local activists and campesino leaders, addressing local issues. He and his fellow rebel leaders also visited political prisoners in all three states.

Subcomandante Marcos said Jan. 14 that the Zapatista Army of National Liberation will not accept the invitation by Bolivian president-elect Evo Morales to attend his Jan. 22 inauguration. During a meeting with supporters on the Zapatistas' "Other Campaign" in Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Marcos—known as "Delegate Zero" for the duration of the national tour—responded to a question about Morales' request: "They invited us and we received the invitation but we're not going to go, because we are in the Other Campaign... We don't have relations with governments, whether they are good or bad. We have relations with the people. And we have a lot of respect for the Bolivian people." (NarcoNews, Jan. 15)

On Jan. 6, just as the Zapatista national tour (dubbed the "Other Campaign" in reference to the presidential campaigns now underway in Mexico) had reached the town of Tonala, in the Pacific coastal zone of Chiapas state, word arrived that Comandante Ramona, a highly respected member of the Zapatista Army's General Command, had finally succumbed to kidney cancer after a long struggle. Subcomandante Marcos announced from Tonala that the tour would be delayed by two days as the Zapatistas congregated in the highland hamlet of Oventic for Ramona's funeral. "Comandante Ramona snatched 10 years from death," Marcos said. "[T]he world lost one of those women who give birth to new worlds."

The Zapatista rebels' "Other Campaign"—thusly named in reference to the presidential campaigns now underway in Mexico—has held rallies at various locations around the state of Chiapas since it took off from the jungle village of La Garrucha on New Years Day.

The "Other Campaign," a tour of Mexico by leaders of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), set off from the Chiapas village of La Garrucha on New Years Day—the anniversary of the Zapatistas' 1994 uprising. Rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos, at the head of a procession of hundreds of Zapatista rebels (masked but unarmed), departed from the village on a black motorcycle with a Mexican flag tied to the back. (Xinhua, Jan. 2)

On December 16 the Mexican League for the Defense of Human Rights (LIMEDDH) reported that a campesino active in the environmental movement in the southern state of Guerrero, Diego Bahena Armenta, hasn't been seen since November 8, when he was kidnapped by eight hooded men in a Nissan van without license plates as he was working with his nephew cleaning the road near the Riscalillo ranch, in Zihuatanejo municipality. His family reported his disappearance immediately to the state police but has received no information on him.

A sudden surge in violence in the Mexican Pacific resort of Acapulco is baffling authorities. In the last year, nine police officers have been killed in Acapulco, a city of 700,000 in the southern state of Guerrero. Since January alone, there have been 20 execution-style killings, among them the municipal police chief, two Mexican tourists, a prominent disco owner and an investigator for the state attorney general's office.

Three unidentified men armed with two AK-47 assault rifles and a 9-mm pistol shot and killed former political prisoner Miguel Angel Mesino in broad daylight on Sept. 18 in the town center of Atoyac municipality in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. The killing took place 100 meters from the police headquarters.