(7/17/98)
SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico (Reuters) -- Zapatista rebel leader Subcommander Marcos broke a four-month silence Wednesday, issuing a communique in which he compared himself with the cartoon character Speedy Gonzalez.
The charismatic leader of the Zapatista National Liberation Army in Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas had not been heard from since March, leading to speculation he was dead, sick or outside the country.
The rebel leader on Wednesday sent two separate communiques to reporters, one addressed to supporters in an Indian language and another in Spanish to the Mexican army, the Guatemalan army, the international police agency Interpol and Mexican intelligence agencies.
``Yepa, yepa, yepa! Andale, andale! Arriba, arriba!'' Marcos said in the Spanish statement, expressions made famous by Speedy Gonzalez, a cartoon mouse who once starred alongside Bugs Bunny in Warner Brothers cartoons.
It was signed with Marcos' distinctive signature, and included his his full nom de guerre, Insurgent Subcommander Marcos, followed by ``alias `Sub Speedy Gonzalez,' or `a stone in your shoe,' which is the same thing.'' It contained nothing beyond the Speedy Gonzalez catch phrases and the sign-off.
Marcos and other Zapatista commanders have been holed up in the jungles of Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala. They launched an armed uprising on Jan. 1, 1994.
Ten days of combat with the Mexican army killed about 150 people, but hundreds more civilians have died in related political violence since then.
The government believes Marcos is Rafael Sebastian Guillen, a former school teacher from the Gulf of Mexico city Tampico who gravitated to Chiapas after spending time in Nicaragua during the rule of the leftist Sandinista regime in the 1980s.
The real Speedy Gonzalez was not available for comment.