Chubby Revolutionary Maximizes Calories, Not Contradictions

Yes, let's get on with the Paunchy Villa jokes. Yes, he's large and still in charge. Yes, Subcommandante Marcos, leader of the Zapatista rebels in Mexico, probably should sign on to Subcommandante Jared's diet plan of low-fat sandwiches.

The erstwhile rebel has surfaced like a beached whale after four years of what appears to be living extremely well underground, joking about his weight. From the U.K. Guardian's account, which should be enough to make you think the ski-mask-wearing Marcos has been killed and replaced by the Unknown Comic:

The once trim Marcos acknowledged his weight gain with typical wry self-deprecation in a message published Thursday by the newspaper La Jornada.

He said it could have been worse. If he had removed the belt, "there would be a paunch like a six-month pregnancy."

"Well, yes, and what of it?" he added. "Fat but pretty."

Marcos joked about the mystique of the tall, sexy military leader in black ski mask that arose around him in the early years after the Zapatista National Liberation Army burst into the news by seizing several towns in the southern state of Chiapas on New Year's Day, 1994.

"No more of that 'sex symbol' now,he wrote. "I tell you, now I don't even heat up the coffee."

Whole thing here.

As we await the inevitable Nation expose that decries Marcos' newfound tubbiness as one more sign of Big Food's relentless merchandising to children of all ages, let's observe a minute of silent chewing out of respect for a world in which even the rebel leader of supposedly starving peasants is a fat shit.

Over a decade ago in Reason, Dario Fernandez-Morera wrote that "Chiapas tells the old story of peasant Indians used by urban intellectuals." Read more here.