Magnet for Globophobes.(Brent Berlin)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)

With his goatee, sandals and dreams of retiring to his house in the rebel land of Chiapas, Brent Berlin evokes the image of an aging hippie. One of the few outsiders who speaks Tzeltal, a local language, the 64-year-old anthropologist and herbalist now finds himself vilified as a "biopirate" working with big drug companies to rip off the medicinal secrets of the Mayans. Indians backed by international activists are trying to chase Berlin out of Chiapas, which has Mexico's largest concentration of indigenous people, most of them desperately poor. "The globalization train has left the station," he says. "I want to help the Mayans get on. My opponents want to stop the train."

The Indian rebellion launched on Jan. 1, 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect, has turned Chiapas into a hotbed of globophobes. Now on the apparent cusp of victory, the rebels are not about to give up the fight. Mexico's new president, Vicente Fox, has met all their demands, closing military bases, freeing political prisoners and endorsing a proposed law that would give more autonomy to Indian communities in Chiapas and elsewhere. Yet even as they lobbied for the bill before Congress last week, the masked rebels continued to bash Fox. Why? Fox wants to invest $25 billion to turn southern Mexico into a gateway for commerce with Central America, and the rebels want no part of trade. Their celebrity leader, Subcomandante Marcos, dismisses businessmen as "ignorant and shortsighted" and accuses Fox of trying to fill the mountains "with gas stations, malls and plastic playlands."

Marcos has his own vision of globalization. After their 12-day offensive in 1994, the rebels retreated to the jungle, where Marcos became a magnet for thousands of Europeans and Americans nostalgic for leftist revolutions of the 1960s. Dozens of activist groups have set up shop in Chiapas. On a caravan to the capital last month, Marcos and his top commanders were trailed by a sea of Europeans wearing dreadlocks and backpacks and playing Hacky Sack. About 150 White Monkeys--Italian activists named after their white suits--formed a human fence around the Zapatista leaders at every stop.

Their aim is to keep out other foreigners--particularly those with profit motives. That's what derailed the project led by Berlin and his wife, Eloise Ann. Both are professors at the University of Georgia and have been coming to Chiapas for four decades. In 1998 they received a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. National Institute of Health to study ...