page_title: Zapatista Army of National Liberation
section_title: Military offensive
hierarchical_section_title: Zapatista Army of National Liberation / History / 1990s / Military offensive
caption_attribution_description: Español: Subcomandante Marcos del EZLN durante la Marcha del Color de la Tierra. 23 comandantes del EZLN y el Subcomandante Marcos acompañados por la sociedad civil nacional e internacional recorrieron diferentes estados de México desde Chiapas al Distrito Federal .
context_page_description: The Zapatista Army of National Liberation, often referred to as the Zapatistas, is a far-left libertarian-socialist political and militant group that controls a substantial amount of territory in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico.
  Since 1994 the group has been nominally at war with the Mexican state. In recent years, the EZLN has focused on a strategy of civil resistance. The Zapatistas' main body is made up of mostly rural indigenous people, but it includes some supporters in urban areas and internationally. The EZLN's main spokesperson is Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano, previously known as Subcomandante Marcos. Unlike other Zapatista spokespeople, Marcos is not an indigenous Maya.
  The group takes its name from Emiliano Zapata, the agrarian revolutionary and commander of the Liberation Army of the South during the Mexican Revolution, and sees itself as his ideological heir. Nearly all EZLN villages contain murals with images of Zapata, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and Subcomandante Marcos.
  While EZLN ideology is similar to libertarian socialism, the Zapatistas have rejected and defied political classification.
context_section_description: Arrest-warrants were made for Marcos, Javier Elorriaga Berdegue, Silvia Fernández Hernández, Jorge Santiago, Fernando Yanez, German Vicente and other Zapatistas. At that point, in the Lacandon Jungle, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation was under military siege by the Mexican Army. Javier Elorriaga was captured on February 9, 1995, by forces from a military garrison at Gabina Velázquez in the town of Las Margaritas, and was later taken to the Cerro Hueco prison in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas.
  
  On February 11, 1995, the PGR informed the country that the government had implemented an operation in the State of México, where they had captured 14 people presumed to be involved with the Zapatistas, of which eight had already being turned over to the judicial authorities, they had also seized an important arsenal.
   The PGR threatened the San Cristóbal de Las Casas' Catholic Bishop, Samuel Ruiz García, with arrest. Claiming that they helped conceal the Zapatistas' guerrilla uprising, although their activities had been reported years before in, Proceso, 
  a major leftist magazine. It is likely however that the Mexican Government knew about the uprising but failed to act. This adversely impacted Mexico-Vatican relations.
  Under the considerable political pressure of a worsening situation, and believing a peaceful solution to be possible, Mexican Secretary of the Interior Lic. Esteban Moctezuma campaigned to reach a peacefully negotiated solution to the 1995 Zapatista Crisis.
  In response to the siege of the EZLN, Moctezuma, the interior minister, submitted his resignation to President Zedillo, which Zedillo refused to accept. Influenced by Moctezuma's protest, President Zedillo abandoned the military offensive in favor of a diplomatic approach. The Mexican army eased its operation in Chiapas, allowing Marcos to escape the military perimeter in the Lacandon jungle. Responding to the change of conditions, friends of the EZLN along with Subcomandante Marcos prepared a report for under-Secretary of the Interior Luis Maldonado Venegas; the Secretary of the Interior Esteban Moctezuma and then President Zedillo. The document stressed Marcos' natural pacifist inclination and an unwillingness to get caught in a bloody war. The document also said that the marginalized groups and the radical left that existed in México supported the Zapatista movement. It also stressed that Marcos maintained an open negotiating track.
caption: Subcomandante Marcos of EZLN during the Earth Color March.
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