Zapatista rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos received a rapturous welcome in Mexico City yesterday in the crowning moment of a 15-day journey through Mexico.
He appealed for a new deal for the nation's downtrodden Indians. "Don't let there be another dawn (in Mexico) without the flag having a place for us, those who are the color of the earth," Marcos said, referring to 10 million indigenous Mexicans whose cause he has championed.
Most of the nation's 100 million people are of mixed Spanish and Indian blood.
"It is time for this country to stop being an object of shame dressed in the colour of money," he said.
Mexico City turned Zapatista yesterday as more than one million people converged on the capital's giant central square, welcoming the convoy of leaders of the armed indigenous movement which has shaken Mexico's political system to its foundations.
The arrival of the Zapatista convoy marked the culmination of a two-week trek across 12 Mexican states, covering 2,000 miles. In dozens of speeches and interviews along the way, 23 rebel commanders outlined their vision of a democratic society sustained by a humane economic strategy.
The rebels specifically denounced the Puebla-Panama project, President Vicente Fox's pet development plan, which would create a low-wage industrial belt in south-east Mexico, stretching from Mexico City to Central America.
The plan would offer investment incentives to transnational companies while displacing local farmers, deprived of credits and technical aid. It would also create a buffer zone in central Mexico to slow down immigration to the US.
The Zapatistas' epic voyage obeyed the rebel's 1994 promise to "advance on the capital city, protecting the civilian population" and overthrow the "illegal" government.
Unlike January 1994, however, when the rebels declared war on the Mexican government, the Zapatistas have swapped their weapons for their word, lobbying parliament to achieve their demands, principally land and autonomy for the nation's 11 million indigenous people.
President Fox's historic defeat of Mexico's ruling party last July conferred legitimacy on the nation's weak democratic institutions, but little change is expected for the country's majority poor.
The Zapatista National Liberation Movement (EZLN) was the first major social group to challenge a free trade agreement, anticipating the emerging anti-globalisation movement by several years.
The rebels described the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), implemented in January 1994, as a "death sentence" for Mexico's indigenous people, as agrarian reform laws were repealed to allow the privatisation of communal land.
The Zapatista movement has attracted a large international support movement, with Jose Bove, a radical French farmer, and a Nobel Literature Prizewinner, Jose Saramago, joining the march, along with thousands more, from Ireland to Argentina.
President Fox, anxious to seize the initiative back from the rebel movement, was due to address the nation late yesterday to announce the withdrawal of army troops from three positions in Chiapas, one of the preconditions for the resumption of dialogue.
In addition 19 rebel prisoners were released in Chiapas on Saturday, leaving just 10 Zapatistas behind bars, their release another precondition for peace talks.
The final step toward direct negotiations with the Fox administration would be the incorporation of the San Andres Peace Accord into Mexican law, granting limited autonomy to indigenous communities.