On the periphery of the Marcos media orbit however, one finds a different breed of cameraman, one who stands on the roadside as the caravan passes through truck stops and small towns, one who leans against walls and telephone poles across the street from the offices and houses where Other Campaign meetings are held.

This cameraman—and they have all been men thus far—can be distinguished by two characteristics. First, he stands completely rigid as he films, in sharp contrast to the ninja contortionism of the press photographers. Second, he does not seek images of Marcos, but of those around him—supporters, local event organizers, groupies, reporters, and anyone who comes to speak or to listen.

These cameramen are orejas (literally, “ears” in Spanish); they are spies for the government, political parties, and local businessmen and power brokers, some of them freelance, some on staff. Their function is different than that of the uniformed Federal Preventive Police, who are also filming the caravan daily.

Orejas are meant to be seen and not seen at the same time. They stand back from the crowd and strike unassuming poses as if they were spectators or curious passersby. But their distance and stillness stand out amongst the flurry of activity that surrounds Marcos. Their calm methodology thus betrays their assignment: filming and taking photographs of individuals in the crowd, one by one, as if crossing items off of a list.

I have witnessed orejas work through the crowd daily and have caught several filming and photographing me from a distance. One recent morning, as the caravan prepared to pull out of Playa del Carmen en route to Cancun, a man stepped in front of the car I was traveling in, snapped a photograph and then moved on to repeat this operation in front of two other cars. By the time I pulled out my camera and got out of the car to take his picture, he had disappeared.

Later that day, two undercover intelligence officers rear-ended us at a red light, causing us to lose sight of the caravan. They drove a white van with tinted windows which we had not seen earlier in the caravan. We asked if they were police and they nonchalantly responded, “Nah.” One said that he worked for a “socialist non-governmental organization,” without a name, and the other for a “taxi drivers union.” After following us to a mechanic and paying, in cash, for the repairs to the back door, they—who supposedly came in the caravan with us—gave us exact directions through a labyrinthine neighborhood to reach the caravan's destination. We had to hitchhike for two days while the back door was repaired.

The Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center and the International Service for Peace, two San Cristobal-based non-profit organizations, recently released a brief summary of “alarming signs” during the Other Campaign’s two-week trek across Chiapas.
“Throughout the entire trip,” the release states, “the presence of intelligence officers was clear and ostentatious… Many of them carried arms, but above all else they carried still and video cameras. Their intention was evident to record license plates, photograph faces, and record the speeches of participants and members of the Other Campaign.”

During the massive 2002-2003 protests across the United States against the then impending invasion of Iraq, local and federal police went undercover into the crowds of protesters to videotape and photograph organizers and participants. Their intention was to gather information, and do so unnoticed. The presence of orejas in the events and travels of the Other Campaign is distinct. The police agents and low-level freelancers here do not hide or attempt to blend in with the crowd, they loom at the edge of the action, and they do so to record and to intimidate.

In a country where year after year local and federal officials are involved in the torture, assassination, and mass killings of community activists and political dissidents, the presence of orejas carries a different weight than that of the undercover peace march videographers. Not only does one feel that they are being watched and recorded, but that at any time they might be sought out and found.

I have confronted several orejas. They say that they are “sympathizers” and that they work for non-governmental organizations. These non-governmental organizations never have names, though they are always “socialist.” I have also tried to interview the uniformed federal police who film the caravan daily only to hear “I don't know anything about it,” regardless of the question.
In Joaquin Amaro, on the coast of Chiapas, two over-sized and sparkling clean pick-up trucks pulled up to the end of the parked cars from the caravan. Ten men sat packed inside the trucks and another four outside on the edges of the truck bed. Two reporters from national papers based in Mexico City interviewed the men asking where they were from. They responded that they worked for a nameless non-governmental organization. They said that they were “Marcos fans.” The fourteen men with military haircuts were such devout fans that they sat crammed in two 4x4s while Marcos spoke to a small crowd packed under a thatched roof several hundred yards away. The men never left their trucks.

Why are so many orejas following the Other Campaign? Intelligence gathering, intimidation, and repression so often respond to perceived threats that bear little to no relation to the intentions and actions of those targeted. With the Other Campaign though there is a real threat: a national grassroots organizing effort to do away with all the registered political parties in Mexico and the capitalist economic system that sustains them. What is more dangerous, the Other Campaign aspires to uproot capitalism and political parties without firing a shot or lighting a fuse, but instead by using reason and argument to strip the parties of all semblance of legitimacy and convince the people of Mexico to leave them behind.

President Vicente Fox and the leaders of the major parties have publicly welcomed the Other Campaign as a sign that the EZLN is leaving armed rebellion behind to participate in the democratic process.

“For us the case of the EZLN is part of the democratic change in Mexico,” Fox told the press agency DPA. “This takes us to a new phase, a new stage in the state of Chiapas that today enjoys great tranquility; there is now social peace in Chiapas...”

Fox's comment can be attributed to one of two states of mind: denial or the will to deceive, for the conditions in which most chiapanecos live, particularly the indigenous, can hardly be described as peaceful. Beyond the endemic racism and economic inequality in Chiapas, the state is still in the throes of armed conflict.

In February 2005, the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center published a report titled “Genocidal Policy in the Armed Conflict in Chiapas,” documenting massacres and constant armed hostility carried out by the military, state police, and paramilitary forces. CAPISE, a San Cristobal-based think tank that studies militarization in Chiapas, has documented the presence of 111 military bases and camps and at least three distinct paramilitary groups in the state.

The EZLN, for its part, has organized 29 autonomous municipalities, all of which are in civil resistance against the federal government. These Zapatista communities have organized to construct and maintain their own schools, health clinics, workers associations and governing bodies, known as good government councils, (juntas de buen gobierno).

Fox's declaration of social peace in Chiapas comes at the end of a six-year term during which he continually turned his back on the Zapatistas's demands for constitutional reforms to protect indigenous culture and rights. Now he wants to take credit in a way for the EZLN's Other Campaign, calling it a part of the “democratic change” of his presidency. Fox can claim some credit for inspiring the Other Campaign, though not as a result of democracy. In 2001, after the EZLN marched to Mexico City to promote their indigenous rights law, Fox and the other major political parties killed the Zapatistas's constitutional reforms. This betrayal lead the Zapatistas to cut all ties with the government and the national parties, establish their autonomous municipalities, and later write the Sixth Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle and launch the Other Campaign.

The constant presence of orejas along the trail of the Other Campaign is a clear indication that the government and political elite do not in fact welcome the Zapatista organizing effort, and more over that they have not left behind their use of counterinsurgency tactics to monitor and intimidate social dissidence. The orejas might dissuade a few people from attending or from speaking up, but for the rest they are a living example of why the governing elite cannot be trusted.


-- John Gibler is a Global Exchange human rights fellow in Mexico.