DATELINE–Los Angeles

When Christine Cardona went shopping last weekend she got an unexpected surprise in the produce section at her local Whole Foods supermarket in La Jolla, California.

Cardona, a mother of two and a grammar school teacher, was sorting through bunches of grapes when she suddenly discovered a tiny doll nestled underneath a half pound of California seedless.

Thinking someone else had accidentally dropped the doll in the fruit bin, Cardona returned it to the front desk. The clerk, believing it was an item for sale at the organic foods store, handed it over to inventory for restocking.

A few hours later, the regional Whole Foods office called the manager of the La Jolla branch and asked if any black fabric dolls had been found in the store. By this time, over 400 identical dolls had turned up in Safeway, Lucky’s, CalaFoods and Von’s supermarkets throughout the state of California.

Worried that a massive poisoning campaign might be in the works, representatives from the supermarket chains contacted state officials who immediately ordered that all California table grapes be pulled from the produce section of stores statewide.

Although the press quickly reported news of the possible grape contamination, no mention was made of the enigmatic dolls that sparked the scare. Thus far, none of the grapes sampled have shown evidence of tampering or toxicity. Two days after the initial scare, grapes were quietly returned to the shelves.

But by then a bizarre press release connecting the dolls to the grape recall had been faxed and e-mailed to press agencies in California and across the United States. The communiqué was issued by a group calling itself “Las Artesanas Zapatistas Les Ganarán A Los Artistas Derrotistas” or Zapatista Artisans Will Triumph Against Defeatist Artists.

In the four page dispatch, Las Artesanas claimed responsibility for having planted the dolls which precipitated the brief grape recall and urged American consumers to reconsider their “duplicitous” relationship with the government of Mexico.

The small black dolls in question are known as Marcos dolls in Mexico and are identical to the wool dolls dressed in indigenous Chiapanecan clothing that have been sold to tourists for decades. The simple addition of a ski mask and a toothpick rifle transforms them into toy versions of the famous Zapatista spokesman and strategist Subcomandante Marcos.

The Zapatista rebels have been struggling to secure civil rights and land reforms for indigenous peoples in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico.

In the press release, Las Artesanas repeatedly asked “Uvas Qué?” while imploring shoppers to “do some comparison shopping and calculate the human costs of the feudal conditions in Chiapas.”

Anthropologist Lawrence Rivers who teaches at the University of Southern California has been studying the unrest in Chiapas and Las Artesanas, in particular, for the last few years. Rivers believes this latest media stunt is an attempt by the Zapatistas to reach out to potential sympathizers in the U.S.

It is Rivers opinion that Las Artesanas may be using the rhetoric of the U.S. civil rights movement to garner much needed support. Says Rivers, “The fate of the indigenous people could mark a turnaround in the history of Latin American countries…[where] race has all too often been used as a barrier to democracy and economic opportunity.”

The Zapatistas have recently been invited to resume negotiations with the Mexican government after nearly a year-long stalemate.