By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service

MEXICO CITY, Oct. 11 –– Where is Marcos?

President-elect Vicente Fox has done everything but send wine and roses to Mexico's most famous rebel leader in his jungle hideout in Chiapas, the dirt-poor
southern Mexican state where an armed rebellion has festered for six years. Fox, who takes office Dec. 1, has pledged that ending the conflict will be a top priority
for his government.

But Subcomandante Marcos--the poet-philosopher, pipe-smoking, ski mask-wearing champion of the downtrodden and armed rebels in Chiapas--has not spoken
publicly since Fox scored a victory in historic elections on July 2. And Mexicans have begun to wonder why.

On a European tour last week where international human rights groups pressed him on the Chiapas issue, Fox repeated his oft-stated promise to work against the
twin evils of poverty and government neglect that Marcos and his Zapatista followers have railed against. But Marcos, famous for regular written communiques
delivered in secret from "somewhere in the jungle," still has not responded.

Many analysts believe Marcos's silence reflects confusion in a movement that has lost much popular support since it erupted on New Year's Day 1994. Others say
the election of Fox in Mexico's freest and fairest ballot in modern history has undercut a key Zapatista argument: that the Mexican government does not truly reflect
the will of the people.

But those closest to the Zapatista rebel movement say Marcos's failure to acknowledge Fox's overtures reflects a deep-rooted and richly justified distrust of
government, and an unwillingness to take any politician at his word.

"Why does he have to speak when no one has ever responded?" said Samuel Ruiz, the recently retired Roman Catholic bishop of Chiapas who has dedicated his
career to the plight of the Indians who are numerous there and figure prominently in the Zapatista movement.

The Mexican government has repeatedly reneged on promises to improve the plight of the indigenous residents of Mexico's poorest state, Ruiz said in an interview.
Fox's words, he said, are nothing but words until he turns them into actions.

"On the first of December we will know what is inside, what is his intention," Ruiz said.

Fox says he will push to enact the 1994 San Andres peace agreement, which the current Mexican government has largely ignored, and will send it to Congress on the
day of his inauguration. Fox says he will pull the Mexican army out of indigenous villages and negotiate personally with the rebels if necessary. He has promised to
relocate manufacturing plants from the booming north to Chiapas and has traveled to Central America looking for trade to benefit the peasants Marcos and his
Zapatistas represent.

"There is not one single issue that we won't be willing to discuss in order for the problem to be resolved to everyone's satisfaction," Fox said in Europe.

But with all that Fox placed on the table, there has not been a peep from Marcos--not even after the Aug. 20 election of a new Chiapas governor, Pablo Salazar, the
state's first opposition party leader in decades and a man who helped write the San Andres peace accords.

Marcos's silence has recently prompted a series of ever-weirder rumors, from the possibility that he has been secretly captured by the government to that he has
been kidnapped or toppled in an internal coup by rival rebels--or even that he has contracted leprosy.

Carlos Montemayor, an author who has written extensively about the Chiapas conflict, said Marcos will speak when it benefits him.

"During the last four years, he has been saying that the war in Chiapas being conducted by the government through economic and military means is devastating and
barbarous, but nobody believes him," Montemayor said. "So it doesn't always help Marcos to talk."

Others think Marcos is at a loss for what to say to revitalize a cause that has lost much popular support, especially in Mexico City. When the Chiapas rebels stormed
onto the scene demanding justice for the indigenous population, they quickly won supporters at home and abroad. Young people sported T-shirts bearing the
likeness of the ski-masked Marcos; his photograph hung in Mexico City restaurants; and dolls outfitted like him sold by the thousands. He was seen as noble and
dashing, a thinking man's Rambo.

Six years later, many Mexicans have tired of the issue and simply want it solved.

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