Mexico's Zapatista rebels—who have observed a long ceasefire but still have a zone of control in the back-country of Chiapas state—just concluded an international gathering in the highland city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Convened on the premesis of the Indigenous Center for Integral Training (Centro Indígena de Capacitación Integral—CIDECI), the gathering was entitled "Seedbed: The Storm Inside and Outside According to the Zapatista Communities & Peoples" (Semillero: La Tormenta dentro y fuera según las comunidades y pueblos zapatistas [17]).
Featured speaker on April 3 was a ski-masked "Captain Marcos," presumably the same charismatic spokesman once known as "Subcommander Marcos [12]." He delivered an exegesis entitled: "A Peephole into the Storm in the World: Nation-States Under Attack" (Una mirilla a la Tormenta en el Mundo: Los Estados-Nación bajo ataque [13]). Marcos portrayed a supra-national imperialism under Donald Trump, in which "the nation-state has no decision-making power." Marcos decried the "kidnapping" of Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, and the US oil blockade on Cuba, especially noting that Mexico has been effectively barred [14] from shipping oil to the Caribbean island nation. He hailed the tenacious resistance of the Cubans and Palestinians.
Marcos asserted that in the US-Israeli war against Iran, the big oil companies are the ones who benefit, as the price of oil has dramatically risen [15]. "That's what needs to be discussed: who is profiting from these wars?" (La Jornada [18] via Mexico Solidarity Media [19])
