Interview With Salvador Castaneda About The Zapatistas' Struggle
From Arm the Spirit, 21 January, 1995
Salvador Castaneda, born in 1946, was a founding member of the 'Movimento de Accion Revolucionaria' (MAR), a political-military organization which organized a guerrilla struggle in Mexico in the 1970s. After the defeat of the MAR, he spent several years in prison. In 1990, he and other former guerrilla founded the Centre for Historical Studies of Armed Movements (CIHMA). Juan Chicoy interviewed Salvador Castaneda on December 5, 1994 in Mexico City. We are translating this interview from issue #373 of the German-language magazine analyse & kritik.
Mexico is a country where political-military organizations have had little success in the past. None of the armed groups in the 60s and 70s managed to become a political force at the national level, unlike the guerrilla movements in El Salvador and Nicaragua for example. Today, as one phase of the Latin America guerrilla comes to an end, and in which many former guerrilla organizations have bid farewell to the revolution (ERP, M-19), the EZLN seems to be introducing a new phase of armed revolutionary struggle. How could this organization develop so quickly - in a war lasting less than two weeks - into a political force of such significance?
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