Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente (born 19 June 1957)[1] is a Mexican insurgent, the former military leader and spokesman for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in the ongoing Chiapas conflict,[2] and a prominent anti-capitalist and anti-neoliberal.

While not Mayan himself, Marcos emerged as the group's military leader, and when the EZLN, acting independently of the FLN, began its rebellion on 1 January 1994, he served as its spokesman.

[2] Known for his trademark ski mask and pipe and for his charismatic personality, Marcos coordinated the EZLN's 1994 uprising, headed up the subsequent peace negotiations, and played a prominent role throughout the Zapatistas' struggle in the following decades.

[7] In 2001, he headed a delegation of Zapatista commanders to Mexico City to deliver their message on promoting indigenous rights before the Mexican Congress, attracting widespread public and media attention.

[13][12] In a 2001 interview with Gabriel García Márquez and Roberto Pombo, Guillén described his upbringing as middle class and "without financial difficulties," and said his parents fostered a love for language and reading in their children.

[19] He began teaching at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) while finishing his dissertation at the UNAM, and somewhere during this time was introduced to the Forces of National Liberation (FLN).

[21] In 1984, he abandoned his academic career in the capital and left for the mountains of Chiapas to convince the poor, indigenous Mayan population to organize and launch a proletarian revolution against the Mexican bourgeoisie and the federal government.

However, with the wounding of a subordinate, whose duty it was to transport the weapons just captured from the police station to the central town square where most of the Zapatista troops were amassed, Marcos took his place and headed there instead.

As Henck notes: "The first three months of 1994 ... saw the Subcomandante ... giving 24 interviews (i.e. an average of two a week); and participating in ten days of peace negotiations with the government, during which he also held nine press conferences reporting on the progress being made ..."[29] In the coming months Marcos would be interviewed by Ed Bradley for 60 Minutes Subcomandante Marcos, CBS News 60 Minutes be featured in Vanity Fair Mexico's Poet Rebel.

[32] Arrest warrants were issued for Marcos,[33] as well as other key figures in the FLN and EZLN, and Zapatista territory in the Lacandon Jungle was invaded by the Mexican Army.

[35] Third, Marcos himself capitalized on this sudden, hostile action, issuing some eloquent communiqués in which he lambasted the government's treachery, or at least duplicity, and portrayed himself as self-effacing mock heroic guerrilla.

[37] Finally, it prompted Max Appedole, Rafael Guillén's childhood friend and fellow student at the Instituto Cultural Tampico, to approach Edén Pastora, the legendary Nicaraguan "Commander Zero", to help in preparing a report for Under-Secretary of the Interior Luis Maldonado Venegas, Secretary Moctezuma, and President Zedillo, emphasizing Marcos's pacifist disposition and the unintended, detrimental consequences of a military solution to the Zapatista crisis.

[38] The document concluded that the complaints of marginalized groups and the radical left in México had been vented through the Zapatistas movement, while Marcos remained open to negotiation.

[39] As a result, on 10 March 1995 Zedillo and Moctezuma signed into Chiapas Law the "Presidential Decree for the Dialogue, Reconciliation and Peace with Dignity", which was subsequently debated and approved by the Mexican Congress.

[58] Marcos's literary output serves a political purpose, and even performs a combative function, as suggested in a 2002 book titled Our Word is Our Weapon, a compilation of his articles, poems, speeches, and letters.

In another interview, given to Jesús Quintero the previous year, however, when asked what he thought about the "pre-revolutionary situation" then existing in Latin America, and specifically about "Evo Morales.

[60] Marcos's popularity was at its height during the first seven years of the Zapatista uprising, A cult of personality developed around the Subcomandante based on the romantic premise of a rebel confronting the powerful in defense of society's underdogs, and an accompanying copious press coverage, sometimes called "Marcos-mania".

He was also courted by numerous famous figures and literati (e.g. Oliver Stone, Naomi Klein, Danielle Mitterrand, Regis Debray, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Juan Gelman, Gabriel García Márquez, José Saramago), and engaged in exchanges of letters with eminent intellectuals and writers (e.g. John Berger, Carlos Fuentes, Eduardo Galeano).

Zapatista events Marcos presided over were attended by people from all over the world by the thousands, including media organizations, and he appeared on the front pages of innumerable magazines, and on the covers of many books and DVDs.

He was visited by Oliver Stone, Danielle Mitterrand and Régis DebrayAP, and he acted as host at the Intercontinental Encuentro For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, which drew around 5,000 participants from 50 countries, including documentary makers, academics and reporters, some of whom published the interviews that Marcos granted them on the event's sidelines.

On this 3,000-kilometre (1,900 mi) trek to the capital he was welcomed by "huge adoring crowds, chanting and whistling", while "Marcos handcrafted dolls, and his ski mask-clad face adorns T-shirts, posters and badges.

[72] Marcos has been compared to popular figures such as England's folklore hero Robin Hood, Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, Argentine guerrilla Che Guevara, India's pacifist independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, South African anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, and U.S. president John F. Kennedy in the 1960s, on account of his "popularity in virtually all sectors of Mexican society.