Monday, January 17, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Social activist and writer John Ross, the first American journalist to report on Mexico’s Zapatista revolution, has died. He was 72.
Former colleague Mary Jo McConahay says Ross died Monday at the home of longtime friends on the island of Janitzio in Lake Patzcauro, Mexico. She says the cause was liver cancer.
Ross, a Beat poet and award-winning author, wrote primarily about life and politics in Mexico, where he spent most of the past 50 years.
He reported extensively on the Zapatista rebels, who staged a brief armed uprising for greater indigenous rights in southern Chiapas state in 1994. His work appeared in numerous newspapers in San Francisco and elsewhere.
In early 2003, Ross traveled to Iraq to volunteer as a human shield during U.S. bombing.