Subcomandante Marcos

Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente (born 19 June 1957) is a Mexican insurgent, the former military leader and spokesman for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in the ongoing Chiapas conflict, and a prominent anti-capitalist and anti-neoliberal. Widely known by his initial nom de guerre Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos (frequently shortened to simply Subcomandante Marcos), he has subsequently employed several other pseudonyms: he called himself Delegate Zero during the Other Campaign (2006–2007), Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano (again, frequently with the "Insurgente" omitted) from May 2014 to October 2023, which he adopted in honor of his fallen comrade Jose Luis Solis Lopez, his nom de guerre being Galeano, aka "Teacher Galeano." and since October 2023, Capitán Insurgente Marcos. Marcos bears the title and rank of Capitán (or "Captain" in English), and before that Subcomandante, (or "Subcommander" in English), as opposed to Comandante (or "Commander" in English), because he is under the command of the indigenous commanders who constitute the EZLN's Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee's General Command (CCRI-CG in Spanish). Born in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Marcos earned a degree from the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and taught at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) for several years during the early 1980s. During this time he became increasingly involved with a guerrilla group known as the National Liberation Forces (FLN), before leaving the university and moving to Chiapas in 1984. The Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) (Zapatista Army of National Liberation; often simply called the Zapatistas) was the local Chiapas wing of FLN, founded in the Lacandon Jungle in 1983, initially functioning as a self-defense unit dedicated to protecting Chiapas' Mayan people from evictions and encroachment on their land. While not Mayan himself, Marcos emerged as the group's military leader, and when the EZLN, acting independently of...