With the Zapatistas on New Years Eve

In honor of the 24th anniversary of the Ejercito Zapatista Liberacion Nacional (EZLN) uprising in Chiapas, Mexico.

The video below is from New Years Eve of 2000, when I was doing some accompaniment work in Chiapas, with the Zapatistas community in Oventic.

This footage demonstrates the power of direct action, showing indigenous communities converging on a Mexican military base with the intent of occupying that base until the soldiers agreed to leave……and they did!

The second part of the video is a short speech (more like a poem), that was given by Commandate David at midnight, during the EZLN annual celebration of their uprising, which began in 1994, the year that NAFTA was implemented.

This video is a clip from a longer documentary produced in 2006, entitled, Reversing the Missionary Position: Learning Solidarity on Mayan Time, which can be viewed at this link. I also wrote a book, which accompanies the documentary, entitled,  Sembramos, Comemos, Sembramos: Learning Solidarity on Mayan Time, which is based on the solidarity work I have done in Central America and Mexico, along with my experiences working with refugees from Meso-America during the 1980s through 2006.