Zapped Out: Adios to the Zapatistas.(Don't come back).

If you can't manage a coup d'etat, try a coup de theatre instead. That, at least, is the tactic employed by Subcomandante Marcos, the leader of the Zapatistas, in Mexico. In an age when many people, dazzled by electronic and other imagery, have difficulty in distinguishing the medium from the message and the form from the substance, such a tactic has a pretty fair chance of success. It also has the inestimable advantage of being much less dangerous.

The Zapatistas have now decided to lay down their arms and participate in normal politics. Their rebellion ended with a cross between a bang and a whimper: a triumphant 2,000-mile march on Mexico City, which ended in the huge rally in the Zocalo, the central square of the most populous city in the world. This gave the impression-as, of course, it was intended to do-of unanimous admiration and approval of the movement and its leader. In the face of so popular a protest, who (except a supporter of the immemorial oppression of the Indians) could be churlish enough to doubt the noble aims of the Subcomandante, who so attractively combines in his person the qualities of Che Guevara and Christopher Hitchens?

There is no doubt that he has played brilliantly upon the weaknesses and susceptibilities both of his own country and of the liberal intelligentsia of Europe and America. Whether he originally intended to or not, the Subcomandante has given us an object lesson in the way the modern world works.

The origins of the EZLN-the Zapatistas' self-designated army-are now almost entirely forgotten, clouded by the adulation that is uncritically accorded to the Subcomandante. The EZLN started life as an orthodox, grimly serious Latin American guerrilla movement of the Salvadoran FMLN, Nicaraguan FSLN, or Guatemalan URNG variety. The Subcomandante, who has been convincingly identified as one Rafael Sebastian Guillen by a disaffected underling, was a teacher of graphic arts at the Autonomous University of Mexico. As the son of the owner of a chain of furniture stores, he did not himself emerge (surprise, surprise) from los de abajo, the poorest of the poor. A typical product of the long march through the institutions, he had read his Althusser and his Foucault, and was a great admirer of Guevara into the bargain. He disappeared into the Lacandon jungle in Chiapas in the 1980s, where survivors of the defeated 1970s guerrilla movement, the (pre-EZLN) FLN, were fomenting revolution among peasants already radicalized by Catholic catechists trained in marxisant liberation theology by the slippery, evasive, unscrupulous, and ambitious left-wing bishop of Chiapas, Samuel Ruiz, whose main aim in life seems to be winning the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing an end to a rebellion that he did so much to provoke.

It took the Subcomandante some ten years to gain control of the EZLN and bring it to the point at which he considered it ready to challenge the Mexican state. But by January 1, 1994 (the date on which the EZLN briefly occupied the capital of Chiapas, San Cristobal de las Casas, and other municipalities in the state), there was little hope of support for the EZLN from any external power. The Soviet Union had collapsed and therefore Cuba was no longer in a position to provide aid, even had it wished to do so. Central America's "inevitable revolutions" (to quote the title of a book about them by one well-known North American academic) had by then been defeated and had fizzled out. It seemed as if it was the end of history: the end, that is, if history is regarded as nothing but the struggle of revolution with counterrevolution.

Marcos (his nom de guerre chosen in honor, incidentally, of a fallen leader of the erstwhile Marxist-Leninist FLN) nevertheless spotted an opportunity. He realized that the Mexican state would have at least one hand tied behind its back in responding to his uprising, because it needed desperately to present itself to the world as a modern liberal democracy like any other. A real guerrilla war, which it would be certain to win if it applied a certain amount of judicious brutality, would nevertheless do untold damage to its reputation. Moreover, for all its pretensions, the Mexican state has always lacked full legitimacy among its own people, particularly among its intellectuals, upon whose loyalty it could not count in a conflict with rebels. Itself claiming apostolic succession from a revolution, the Mexican government had for many years befriended Castro and Central American guerrilla movements in order to mask its own hostility to radical change. Such ambivalence and uncertainty was not a sound position from which to indulge in repression in the broad daylight of media attention.

Then, coming as he did from a highly sophisticated urban environment, Marcos understood only too well what the reaction would be of liberal intellectuals in Europe and America to the uprising he led. These intellectuals, he knew, would provide effective protection for him from the potential wrath of the Mexican state. And, as he also knew, the intellectuals had not willingly surrendered their utopian illusions about a perfectly harmonious life to be brought about by revolution in countries inhabited by poor peasants. The fantasies were dormant, not extinct.

Marcos knew that he had only to claim that the rising was led by Indians, of whom he was but the humble white servant, for all criticism to be disarmed in advance. Fools, such as the Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Danielle Mitterand, widow of the former Petainist and firm upholder of Algerie francaise Francois, could always be found to believe it. Criticism was disarmed by Marcos's preposterous claim because, in the eyes of Western liberal intellectuals, Indians were by definition everything that Western man was not: innocent and selfless, in tune with Mother Nature, uninterested in money and consumer goods, and the bearers of ancient if somewhat arcane wisdom. Needless to say, the liberal intellectuals were more interested in the Indians of their fantasy than in, say, the 30,000 real Indians who fled the Zapatista area the moment hostilities started, or in the greatly reduced standard of living that those who did not flee soon suffered. Nor did it worry them that, in 1994, Marcos flung young Indians armed with wooden guns against troops armed with sophisticated weapons.

Marcos understood perfectly well the deep lack of seriousness of the Western liberal intelligentsia, above all in the "postmodern" era. No statement he made would be compared with any earlier statement, because to do so would be to evince a vulgar belief in objective truth. Thus, in a recent interview with another Nobel Prize winner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (who, oddly enough, has expressed an enthusiasm for guerrillas everywhere but Colombia, his own country), Marcos declared that "if the EZLN were to reach power as a revolutionary army, it would be a failure for us." Why, then, was the order issued in 1994 for the EZLN to defeat the Mexican army and enter Mexico City by force? But that was then and this is now: and only the thirst for international public attention has remained, like the grin of the Cheshire cat.

Of course, the reason that military victory would now be considered a defeat is that there is no more prospect of it than of Liechtenstein's invading China. The complete dependence of Marcos and the EZLN on the protection of Western intellectuals is demonstrated by his appeal in his interview with Garcia Marquez to the idea that minorities, such as lesbians and transsexuals, are in the revolutionary vanguard. Even a Saramago might wonder whether the inhabitants of Laguna Santa Elena, Pichucalco, and Guadalupe Trinitaria have ever been much preoccupied by the question of the equal treatment of transsexuals; but it is unlikely that anyone will question Marcos more deeply on the matter.

One giveaway is the frequent description by admirers of Marcos's literary style as "ludic." Ludic is the academic code word for frivolous. No higher praise is possible from those who believe that the universe is intertextual and nothing else. And Marcos's alleged wit consists of saying things like, "Having a photo taken with [Mexican president] Vicente Fox is not among our wet dreams." Garcia Marquez-a great writer, for all his faults-listened to this as a disciple listens to a celebrated swami.

So what was the march to Mexico City about, other than Marcos's ego? (His verbosity makes Fidel seem a model of concision.) Since the military downfall of the Mexican state is not imminent, other causes must be found to sustain the struggle: for without struggle, Marcos is nothing. One of the causes is good old multiculturalism. That is to say, Indians-according to Marcos-demand to be treated the same as all other Mexicans and differently as well.

Their cultural customs, according to him, should be recognized as having the force of law: except, of course, those that might reduce support for the EZLN among European and American liberal intellectuals, such as that of not asking, let alone listening to, the opinion of women, or, worse still, of beating them when they do express an opinion. Furthermore, "indigenous people" must have access to their traditional pre-Columbian means of communication, such as fax, e-mail, and satellite links.

But if there is one thing that Marcos's career demonstrates, it is that, in the modern world, the coherence or good sense of a man's ideas has very little to do with his political effectiveness. Marcos's bandoliers make him brave; his pipe makes him wise; his radiocommunications equipment festooned about his uniform makes him modern and technically accomplished; his balaclava makes him mysterious and romantic; and his jokes make him affable. One day he might be president.