Zapatista Leader Subcommander Marcos Announces His Disappearance: 'Insurgent Subcommander Galeano' is Born

Twenty years after leading the Zapatista insurrection in the mid nineties in Mexico, Subcommander Marcos announced on Sunday he would "cease to exist" and will no longer be the spokesman and image of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN).

Through a press release uploaded to the website of the Zapatista movement, Marcos, one of the most emblematic figures in recent Mexican history, assured that he will no longer speak in the name of the guerrilla group.

"These will be my last words in public before I cease to exist," said the Zapatista leader in the press release, according to Reuters.

The character of Subcommander Marcos, created by the Zapatistas as an "anonymous" but visible face of the movement, will be replaced by "Insurgent Subcommander Galeano", in honor of a Zapatista member who was murdered earlier in the month, according to Fox News.

Since 2006, when he travelled throughout the Mexican Republic on a horse, Subcommander Marcos had almost disappeared from public sight, and there were strong rumors about possible health problems and that he had died, rumors that were finally refuted with the press release dated on Saturday 24th and published on Sunday.

"I neither am nor haven't been sick, I neither am nor haven't been dead. Or rather I have, they killed me so many times, so many times I died, and now I'm here again. If we fed those rumors it was because it was convenient. The last great trick of the hologram was to simulate a terminal disease, and even all the time I've died."

"If you allow me to define Marcos the character then I would not hesitate to say he was a costume," wrote the Zapatista Subcommander, one of the icons of the insurrection, whose image is recognized around the world since 20 years ago.

On January 1, 1994, the EZLN rose up in arms against the Mexican government in many municipalities of the state of Chiapas. During 12 days, it battled the Mexican Army and then entered a negotiation process in San Andrés Larraizar, Chiapas, a process which eventually stalled in 1996.