The rebellion that fought with words as much as with guns — on the first day of 1994, masked Maya fighters in one of Mexico’s poorest states seized towns to cry "Ya basta!" against five centuries of dispossession, then within days mostly laid down their arms and picked up the world's attention, becoming one of the first great rebel movements of the internet age and a living symbol of indigenous autonomy and resistance to global capitalism.
On the first day of 1994, masked indigenous fighters walked out of the forests of Chiapas, one of Mexico’s poorest states, and seized its towns. They called themselves the Zapatistas, after the peasant hero Emiliano Zapata, and their cry was "Ya basta!" — Enough. The date was not an accident. It was the day the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect, and they denounced that deal as a death sentence for Mexico's Indians. The Mexican army struck back hard, and after roughly twelve days of fighting and more than a hundred deaths, a ceasefire held. Then the strangest thing happened. The Zapatistas mostly stopped shooting and started writing. Their pipe-smoking, balaclava-clad spokesman, Subcomandante Marcos, sent poetic communiqués out over the new internet, and a small jungle revolt became a worldwide cause. Rather than seize the Mexican state, they built their own self-governing communities and promised to "lead by obeying." The guns fell quiet within two weeks. The argument they started has lasted decades.