Comandante Ramona

Comandante Ramona, guerrilla and activist Even before the Zapatista uprising, she had been a leading women's rights activist, helping draw up, in 1993, a "revolutionary Law on Women" was born near San Andrés de Larrainzer, Mexico 1959; and died near San Cristóbal, Mexico 6 January 2006, when her kidney failed. Her real name and details of her life before the revolution were never revealed. When Marcos, Subcomandante, launched his Zapatista rebellion in southern Mexico, he was always seen with a small women along his side everything but her eyes were covered.  Even though Marcos was the public face of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) he was not their leader, Comandate Ramona was the leader, and the only reason he was the public face was because the revolutionist did not speak fluent Spanish, only their native tongues. Ramona was demanding greater right for the indigenous people of Chiapas and was protesting Mexico’s involvement in the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), which came into force on New Year’s Day of 1994. Romona sent the first peace talk with the Mexican government in the cathedral of San Cristobal on February 1994. By 1996 she was suffering from a serious kidney disease and received a transplant; however, on October of that year, even though she was sick and fragile she defied the governments ban and showed up in Mexico city for a National Indigenous Congress, people gather around her to stop the police from arresting her, she became almost a mystical figure among indigenous women some even compared her to the Virgin Mary, because of the strength and self-respect she brought to them.