Rebel leader appears before cameras

By Greg Brosnan MEXICO CITY - Eyes wrinkled behind his ski mask after years hiding in the jungle, Mexican rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos is making a comeback that may spell bad news for the country's leftist presidential candidate. Marcos, who led a brief indigenous uprising in the state of Chiapas in 1994, is now supporting machete-wielding peasants in a town near Mexico City who fought police in a riot last week that killed a 14-year old boy. Marcos's visits to the town of San Salvador Atenco before and after the riots have propelled the former poster boy for the anti-globalization movement back onto Mexico's political agenda. He warned that Mexico's July presidential election could be stained with blood if there is no solution to the long-running dispute between locals and police in San Salvador Atenco, which exploded over the eviction of unlicensed flower vendors. "These elections will have to be held with the army and police on the streets," Marcos, smoking his famed pipe, said on Mexico's main morning television news show. Marcos has been on low-profile tour of Mexico that drew little interest until the trouble broke out last week. He predicted in an hour-long television interview that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the capital's former leftist mayor, would win the election although the two men are foes. Marcos accused Lopez Obrador of betraying leftist principles supported by the Zapatistas and said he wants nothing to do with the election. "We are against all of the political class," Marcos said, Conservatives hope to convince voters that Marcos and Lopez Obrador are two sides of the same coin. "Behind the ski mask is the same face of intolerance and authoritarianism which characterises the violent left and which Lopez Obrador represents today," said conservative ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon. In the past two weeks, Lopez Obrador has sunk to second place in opinion polls behind Calderon who has compared him in TV spots to leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Analysts say the riots and resurgence of Marcos could damage the former Mexico City mayor's bid for the presidency even further. "It is bad news for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador that Subcomandante Marcos ... now has a reason to park himself in Mexico City and return to front pages and prime time radio and television," wrote Milenio newspaper columnist Ciro Gomez. Marcos and his followers held a mass protest in Mexico City's main Zocalo square in 2001 to push for an indigenous rights law, but Congress rejected their demands. Disheartened, the Zapatistas went back to their jungle strongholds to set up self-rule in villages there. But Marcos, who led a new rally in the square 10 days ago in his best-attended public appearance in years, said predictions of his demise were premature. "How many times have they decreed my political and media death? I'm almost bored of counting," he said. Marcos denied any direct link to the violence in San Salvador Atenco and said he would stay in Mexico City until hundreds of people arrested in the riots were freed. Marcos and human rights officials say women protesters were raped by police after the trouble. Many protesters were seriously injured by baton-swinging police in violence caught live on television. - REUTERS