¡Zapatistas!

ON NEW YEAR'S DAY 1994 the world was taken by surprise when a group of indigenous people staged a rebellion against the Mexican state. The Zapatista Front of National Liberation (FZLN) invoked the name of legendary revolutionary Emiliano Zapata but had a sophisticated and thoroughly modern agenda. They not only stood for the indigenous people of the southern state of Chiapas, so long neglected by corrupt rulers in Mexico City. They also spoke out against Mexico's accession on that New Year's Day to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Mexico's rulers sent in the Army. But instead of being crushed, the Zapatistas have gone from strength to strength, maturing as a political movement, participating in a broad leftist alliance and using sophisticated electronic means of communicating with the wider world. Their leader Subcomandante Marcos discourages a personality cult but he is a charismatic figure, as inclined to burst into idealistic poetry as he is to launch a political initiative. 'The crash of these two winds will be born, its time has arrived, it has stoked the fire of history. Now the wind from above rules, but here comes the wind from below, here comes the storm... that is how it will be... When the storm calms, when rain and fire again leave the country in peace, the world will no longer be the world but something better.'

On the anniversary of their original uprising, masked Zapatista guerrillas celebrate . The Mexican Army stands guard over the Cathedral in Teopiscas, in the FZLN's home province of Chiapas. Popular support is strong for the rebels in the regional capital, San Cristóbal de las Casas (top right). Subcomandante Marcos has been anxious to forge links with the wider democratic opposition in Mexico and called a National Democratic Convention in Chiapas attended by 6,000 leftist delegates from all over the country.