Subcomandante Marcos

Subcomandante Marcos  is the nom de guerre used by the  spokesperson and de facto leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, a Mexican rebel movement fighting for the rights of the indigenous peoples of Mexico.His nom de guerre Marcos is that of a friend killed at a military road-block checkpoint.

His face covered by a balaclava has crossed the world as symbol of resistance. The Mexican government on February 9, 1995, he said that it knew his identity, identifying it as Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, ex-teacher of the Autonomous Metropolitan University of the Mexico City.

Marcos always he has denied to be Rafael Guillén and affirms that it will never confirm if Marcos and Rafael are the same person.

Marcos's life

Marcos was born in Mexico, son of Spanish immigrants; he studied in an institute in Tampico (Mexico). Later it moved to the Federal District, where it graduated in philosophy. Later it began to be employed as teacher at the University. After it his revolutionary activity begins. On 1 January 1994, when the U.S.–Mexico–Canada free trade agreement became effective, Subcommander Marcos led an army of Mayan farmers into eastern Chiapas state, to protest what he saw as the Mexican federal government's mistreatment of the nation's indigenous peoples.He defended the people indigenous to the abuses of the Mexican power. Marcos is also a writer, a political poet, and an anti-capitalist who advocates the amendment of the Political Constitution of Mexico to formally and specifically recognize the political and the human rights of Mexico's indigenous peoples.


From 1992 to 2006, Marcos wrote many histories and books documenting widely his philosophical and political perspectives. His elliptical, ironic and romantic style can be a way of drifting apart from the painful circumstances that it brings and protests. 

" The power rots the blood and the thought gets dark. "