Subcomandante Elisa (born María Gloria Benavides Guevara; January 1955) is a Mexican activist from Monterrey, Nuevo León.
According to Héctor Escamilla Lira, a prominent guerilla in the Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre (September 23 Communist League), one of the reasons left-wing movements thrived during this time was the lack of repression in the late 1960s and early 70s.
FLN leader César Germán Yáñez Muñoz gathered six revolutionaries (three indigenous, three non-indigenous) at a camp called La Garrapata to establish a more action-based initiative.
[3][4] In an interview with Radio UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) in 1994, Benavides commented on her reasons for joining and remaining with the Zapatista army: "I entered there because I saw the situation that people lived.
At this point in time, the EZLN was devoting considerable resources to its social work in Chiapas, including health and education programs otherwise unavailable to the marginalized indigenous population.
[6] This practice was in keeping with the EZLN's larger goal: to produce, through a sort of peaceful vigilantism, the conditions that were necessary for the continuous reproduction of identity and sovereignty in civil society[7] The movement itself was heavily influenced by the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who emphasized the necessity of forming a "collective will," or "the attainment of a cultural-social unity through which a multiplicity of dispersed wills, with heterogeneous aims, are welded together with a single aim, on the basis of an equal and common conception of the world, both general and particular.
"[8][9] This is the first step in constructing an alternative historical bloc to the one put forth by the ruling class, which he believes is the key to inverting hegemony and beginning to dismantle an oppressive state.
Instruction in first aid and radio communications prepared residents to mobilize, and special military training was taught to EZLN leaders by Sandinista Army commander Lenin Serna.
[2][5] Finally, in an interview with El País in 1995, she professed that while she was no longer part of the guerrilla movement, she wanted “to participate in the consultation, nationally and internationally, devised by the Zapatista leaders about their future.”[12] This has been her public stance since then.
[13] A formal prison order was issued by the Attorney General of the Republic accusing her of terrorism, criminal association, rebellion and possession of prohibited weapons.
This was key to the defense's amparo win, but further complicates the discussion of her membership, because of the abundant source material that suggests she acted on her own will.
Later, the neighborhood incident establishing the government's pretense for invading Benavides' house was found to have been fabricated, and the insurrectionist documents the Attorney General claimed she possessed were revealed to be common political literature owned by much of the population.