Description

For Mexico, Latin America and the international left, what emerged from the Chiapan mist along with the Zapatistas was the specter of revolution with a capital R—something the Mexican autocracy of the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional, the PRI, believed it had killed a long time ago, in the late 1970s. Perhaps it was their strategy of staying and acting underground that allowed the Zapatistas to survive at a time when other groups were being uprooted by the state—even though they themselves also came close to extinction more than once.

Photo: James Lee