Born on the day Ce Mazatl (One Deer), the 23rd of February in the year Chicome Acatl (Seven Reed), 1501, in our sacred city of Tenochtitlan.

Cuauhtémoc was assassinated on the day Chicome Tochtli (Seven Rabbit), the 28th of February in the year Ome Calli (Two House), 1525, at the hands of the Spanish invaders. They tortured our Huey Tlatoani Cuauhtémoc with fire, trying to break his will. But he did not cry out, nor did he plead. The 3rd degree burns would cause him to walk with a limp for the rest of his life. With every step forced upon him on the long march from Tenochtitlan to the lands of Honduras, he carried the pain of his burns with the dignity of our ancestors, and in silence.

Fearing Cuauhtémoc’s leadership and indomitable spirit of resistance that still burned within him—the unyielding flame of our people’s resistance—the Spanish cowards took his life, assassinating him out of fear. But they could not kill his spirit. In our hearts, Cuauhtémoc lives on—our last eagle, our warrior of the sun—an eternal symbol of bravery, honor, and defiance. Cuauhtémoc embodies the enduring spirit and discipline of the Mexica people.

Tzilacatiz found the precious remains of our revered Cuauhtémoc. He carried them with solemn care to Tzompaneuahuith, a region within the lands of Guerrero, to the city of Ichcateopan, the place of Tzilacatiz’s birth. There, wrapped in the finest cloths, the earthly vessel of our last Huey Tlatoani was laid to rest, returned to the soil.

We, the Mexica, have always walked in step with the essence of all creation — not through the ticking of gears or paper decrees, but through the sacred cycles of the sun, the moon, the stars, and the earth beneath our feet.

Our Xiuhpohualli, solar calendar system, is a flawless weaving of 365.25 days — 18 months of 20 days, with five nemontemi, days of reflection, transition, and balance. And in harmony with it is the tonalpohualli, the 260-day Venetian, agricultural, gestational, and ritual calendar which describes the energy of each day, each person, each destiny. This twin calendar system, created by our ancestors, is not merely timekeeping — it is the sacred cyclical motion of life.

In their desperation to fix the errors with the Julian calendar, whose days no longer matched the seasons, they removed 10 days, and later turned to 13 days, added a leap year, and called it the Gregorian calendar. Some nations obeyed. Others refused for over a century. People rioted, demanding their days back — even their bodies knew the rhythm was broken.

But what they didn’t understand is that Time is not a decree or gears. Time is not linear but a sacred cyclical motion.

And still, through all their errors and the destruction that followed their invasion of these lands, the Mexica solar calendar system remains intact — the most precise in the world, more accurate than the Gregorian and rooted in astronomical truth.

And still today, we celebrate the solar calendar system that moves with life itself. In each cycle, in each glyph, our ancestors speak. We remember and we rise with the sun.

Around March 19/20, we celebrate an important event: This day marks one of the two times in the solar year cycle when day and night are in balance and the sun crosses the celestial midpoint.

For us and our ancestors across Anahuac — from the Mexica of Tenochtitlan to the Zapotec of Monte Albán and the Maya of Chichén Itzá — the equinox is a time of alignment: between sun and earth, light and darkness, it is a time of transformation.

It is a time of renewal. We cleansed our homes. We cleansed our bodies. We purified our spirits. The spring equinox signaled that the Sun, Tonatiuh, was racing higher in the sky. Tonatiuh’s journey would bring longer days, warmer air, and the return of life to the lands.

Elders and priests observed at temples across Anahuac the path of Tonatiuh, marking the equinox as the time to begin the cultivation of the sacred maize, beans, peppers, tomatoes, squash, sweet potatoes, and amaranth.

It was also a time of ceremony. People gathered on temple platforms and mountain tops. Light would hit specific stones or glyphs carved with precision — a testimony to our ancestral astronomical mastery. We did not need clocks. We built temples that told us the moment of cosmic balance. To us, this balance is not simply astronomical — it is spiritual.

The equinox is a reminder of duality, one that is sacred and cyclical, which are undeniable elements of our world. Ometeotl: life and death, fire and water — all things in harmony. On that moment, day and night in their perpetual dance are equal, if just for a moment, before the light begins to rise again.

During these times, we walk forward with gratitude. We remember who we are: children of the Sun, guided by the stars and in rhythm with the essence of the cosmos.

March 20, 2026 12:50 PM PDT, March 20, 2027 1:24 PM PDT, March 19, 2028 10:17 PM PDT, March 20, 2029 1:01 AM PDT, March 20, 2030 4:26 PM PDT

Born on March 21, 1806, in San Pablo Guelatao, Oaxaca, Benito Juárez was of Zapotec Indigenous heritage. Orphaned at 3, he spoke only Zapotec in his early years and received no formal education until later in life. Despite these hardships, Juárez eventually became a lawyer, a judge, and from 1847 to 1852, he served as the Governor of Oaxaca.

Juárez was elected President in 1858 and was a central figure in the fight against Conservatives during the War of Reform (1858–1861). One of the reforms was the nationalization of property owned by the Catholic Church, separating Church and State. As part of Juárez’s financial reforms, he suspended foreign debt payments to Spain, England, and France for two years. All 3 nations sent troops to Veracruz in 1861. Through diplomacy, Juárez reached agreements with Spain and England. However, France, under Napoleon III, escalated the conflict and invaded Mexico.

In 1864, Napoleon III installed Archduke Maximilian of Austria as Emperor of Mexico, sparking the Second French Intervention. Juárez refused to recognize this regime. After years of guerrilla warfare and national resistance, Maximilian was captured and executed in 1867. Juárez was reelected in 1867 and 1871, but his presidency was cut short by his death on July 18, 1872.

Through the Liberal Constitution and the Laws of Reform, he dismantled the power of the Catholic Church over civil life, championed education, and asserted that the Mexican nation belonged to all its people, not just elites or foreign powers.

As the first elected Indigenous president in the postcolonial Americas, his story is one of determination and Indigenous resilience. He proved that a man of humble roots and native tongue could lead a fractured nation through war, foreign invasion, and internal division. His words, “El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz” (Respect for the rights of others is peace), are etched into the soul of modern Mexico.

Benito Juárez stands today as a national hero, honored every March 21st with a public holiday, monuments, and memorials throughout Mexico. For many Indigenous peoples, he is a symbol of resistance, self-determination, cultural survival, and dignified leadership in a land still healing from colonial wounds.
(For more on the French invasion and resistance, see Cinco de Mayo.)

César Estrada Chávez born on March 31, 1927 in Yuma, Arizona, and passed away on April 23, 1993. The son of farm workers, Chávez lived from an early age the hardship and exploitation that were part of agricultural work in the U.S.. Alongside Dolores Huerta, they co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) in 1962 to mobilize the migrant workforce. The NFWA merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers (UFW) in 1966.

In 1965, Chávez and the NFWA participated in a strike organized by Filipino workers against California grape growers, demanding fair wages and better working conditions. Chávez urged a nationwide boycott of table grapes and asked all people of conscience to support the farm workers.

The movement garnered international support and continued for five years. Chávez’s dedication to peace, including his 1968 hunger strike, drew widespread attention and moral support, including from Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who praised Chávez’s dedication to justice.

César Chávez is remembered as a symbol of resistance against oppression and economic exploitation. He lives in all struggles for dignity, fair wages, and humane working conditions for all workers. Chávez believed justice is not won through violence, but through collective action, sacrifice, and courage. His words, “Sí, se puede” (“Yes, it can be done”), continue to inspire generations to stand up against injustice in the fields and in the streets.

Born on August 8, 1879, in Anenecuilco, Morelos, Zapata born in an ejido, the communal soil tilled by Indigenous hands for generations.

Zapata is not just a figure of history; he is our general and our spirit of resistance. When he cried “Tierra y Libertad” (Land and Freedom), he gave voice to the ancient understanding that land is life, not property, not for profit, and not for exploitation. His Plan de Ayala, demanding the return of stolen ancestral lands to those who work them, was not a political document but a promise to the people that liberty is rooted in the soil.

Even after his assassination on April 10, 1919, Zapata did not die. As Zapata once declared, it is better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees. And with this, his death became the seeds of resistance in our hearts and in the chants of those who fight against injustice and systems of exploitation forced upon us based on the color of our skin, our language, our dress, and our culture.

Zapata represents resistance against those who view themselves as being from above, the elites who have long tried to silence our voices and steal our lands. His name reminds us that true power does not come from titles or gold — it comes from the people who stand together, unbought and unbroken.

On April 10th, during our ceremonies, we chant his name and raise his banner not in mourning, but in celebration of his resistance. Because when the struggle calls, Zapata answers through us. He is the heart that never surrenders, in a time of betrayal, and even in death. Zapata vive! La lucha sigue!

In Mexico, el Día del Niño — Children’s Day — is celebrated on April 30th. It’s a day dedicated to honoring the joy, innocence, and importance of our children, the future generation. On this day, schools, families, and communities come together to celebrate with games, music, gifts, and activities that remind us how valuable and deserving of love, care, and protection every child is.

On September 26, 1924, the League of Nations adopted the “Declaration of the Rights of the Child” and titled it the Geneva Declaration, recognizing children’s rights. It is unfortunate, to say the least, that there are those out there who need to be told to recognize children’s rights. On November 20, 1959, the United Nations adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Many countries choose to celebrate Universal Children’s Day on November 20, while Mexico celebrates it on April 30.

Día del Niño should serve as a reminder that every child deserves happiness, safety, education, and a voice that is heard.

On May 5, 1862, General Ignacio Zaragoza led an army estimated at 2,000 mostly Indigenous fighters, many of whom were farmers and lacked formal military training. Against a force of 6-7,000 professionally trained French soldiers who were equipped with advanced weaponry, including long-range rifles. The French were considered one of the best European military forces of their time.

In the muddy fields outside the city, those fighters stood their ground and won, and the world saw that Mexico and its people would not bow. It shows that even in the face of powerful empires, when the will of the people is strong, victory is possible.

The victory at Puebla became a symbol of Mexican resistance and unity, especially for Indigenous communities who had long defended those lands—first from colonizers, and then from foreign invaders once again.

Today, Cinco de Mayo is not a celebration of war, but a celebration of dignity, identity, and Indigenous strength. We honor those who stood up to an empire, and we carry their memory forward in the fight for justice, dignity, and liberty.

Dia De las Madres has its roots in other continents. In our traditions as Indigenous peoples of Anahuac, we do not need to look to distant lands to find reasons to honor our mothers.

In Mexico, we celebrate Día de las Madres on May 10th, a day set aside to express gratitude to our mothers. For their love, their support, their guidance, their protection, and their sacrifice.

For us, this celebration is a continuation of what our ancestors already knew — to honor our mothers is to honor all of creation. We give thanks to Tonantzin, our sacred mother, the Earth herself, who nourishes all beings. We also remember Cihuacoatl, the fierce divine mother who watches over childbirth and the spirits of women who gave their lives in labor — warriors of another kind.

To celebrate our mothers is to recognize and thank them as our first teachers, first healers, and the first home we ever knew. Not just on May 10th but every day, we bow our heads in gratitude to the women who bring life into the world, walk beside us, and guide us with strength, love, and ancestral wisdom.

A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it’s finished; no matter how brave its warriors or how strong their weapons.
-Tsitsistas saying

In Danza Mexica, we hold many ceremonies across the seasons to honor our community, our fallen warriors, those who resist, and the sacred rhythms of creation. For our young women, the rite of passage is symbolized through the maize: a sacred journey from Xilonen to Chicomecóatl — from potential to power, in harmony with the turning of Tonatiuh, the sun.

To us, maize is not a crop — it is our origin, our sustainer, our sacred inheritance. It is the breath of our ancestors, the nourishment of our mother, and the foundation of our survival. Xilonen is the young form of Chicomecóatl, the representation of sustenance and abundance, who appears in full at the height of the harvest.

During the sacred month of Huei Tecuilhuitl, we gather to offer songs, flowers, and our deepest gratitude to Xilonen. Through this ceremonial honoring, we renew our commitment to the earth, to our community, to our ancestors, and to the divine cycle of growth and renewal that shapes all life — from seed to stalk, from girl to woman, from earth to sky. Xilonen embodies the sacred promise of life just beginning to grow.

It was not a conquest. It was an invasion. It was not a surrender shrouded in fear. It was a strategy to protect our people.

Up until August 12th, 1521, though vastly outnumbered and weakened by plague and hunger. Cuauhtémoc led our warriors through the canals and stone streets with guerrilla tactics, turning every causeway, every temple, every alley into a battlefield.

The Mexica’s resistance was not just a military one, it was spiritual, cultural, and ancestral. The brave warriors fought to protect a way of life rooted in balance, honor, and the sacred rhythms of the cosmos.

As fire consumed what was left of Tenochtitlan on August 13, Cuauhtémoc, Tecuichpo, and the remaining council boarded a canoe. They were not fleeing; they paddled directly toward the Spanish and confronted the invaders directly. To say he was caught escaping is a lie written by those who feared him even in death, and those who do not understand bravery and love for one’s people. Cuauhtémoc offered a conditional surrender, not for his own life, but to spare his people. His words, “I surrender, on the condition that my people be allowed to leave the island to search for food and that my wife be left unharmed,” are not those of a selfish man, but of a general still protecting his people.

As they tore through our cities, burned our codices, enslaved our people, all while calling it “salvation”. Some neighboring nations, driven by self-interest, sided with the invaders, choosing temporary privilege over lasting freedom. But many others of Anahuac chose resistance, many paid with their blood, their languages, and their lands. But we are still here.

August 13 was not a day of defeat, but the beginning of resistance. We went from warriors of Tenochtitlan to warriors of memory, culture, and survival. While our temples were torn down, our spirits rose. While our languages were silenced in the courts, they were whispered in our homes and sung in ceremonies. While our lands were stolen, our roots grew deeper.

August 13th, Day Of Resistance, is one that lives in our sacred ceremonies, in every drumbeat in our dances, and in every song.

We do not forget. We remember. We resist. We remain.

On September 16, 1810, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a Catholic priest in the town of Dolores in Guanajuato, rang the church bell, which was the spark that ignited the people to rise up against colonial rule. And the fight for Mexican independence from the Spanish Empire began. His cry, known as the Grito de Dolores, there are different accounts of what he said, but he did invoke the Virgin of Guadalupe and condemned the Spanish crown. His famous rally cry included calls like: “Death to the Spaniards! Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe!”

Within weeks, tens of thousands of mostly Indigenous and nearly all poor campesinos joined the uprising, which grew to over 80,000 by the time they reached Mexico City. Instead of attacking, Hidalgo chose to retreat. He was captured a short time later, tried, and executed in 1811. His head was placed in a cage and displayed in Guanajuato as a warning to future rebels. But the spirit of defiance and rebellion against oppression was not, and has not been, extinguished.

Hidalgo’s death only fueled the movement further. More leaders rose, and after over a decade of war, independence was declared on September 27, 1821. However, the struggle didn’t end — Agustín de Iturbide named himself Emperor of Mexico, and a new era of internal oppression and elite control began, continuing the cycle of struggle for Indigenous and working-class people.

These lands were not empty and waiting to be discovered. This was home to 100 million human beings for tens of thousands of years. Organized into countless nations with their own languages, sciences, medicines, astronomy, agricultural practices, religious ceremonies, songs, art, trade, architecture, and stories. We lived in relationship with the land, and all creation was family.

Our world was not perfect, but it was one where locked doors did not exist, the young and elderly were taken care of first, and there was no need for orphanages or prisons; no shame was cast on those born with two spirits.

We lived in harmony with creation, not outside of it, nor above it, but as part of it. We understood the deeply complex web of life, we knew all was interconnected. If we poison, trash, or destroy our world, we do this to ourselves, too.

Then came the invaders.

To some, Columbus is a hero. To us, he was the harbinger of death and destruction. Many defend him blindly, choosing ignorance over truth, ignoring the cruelty he committed. In his own words, “Thursday, 11 October. Weapons they have none, nor are acquainted with them,….. It appears to me, that the people are ingenious, and would be good servants and I am of opinion that they would very readily become Christians, as they appear to have no religion.”

He later wrote, “Sunday, 14 October., I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, and govern them as I pleased.”

And from his shipmate (beware: graphic), “While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral (Columbus) gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked—as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. But—to cut a long story short—I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for whores.”

The following is an excerpt from Schools Growing Harsher In Scrutiny of Columbus, “Columbus and his men seized Caribbean women as ‘sex slaves’, sent attack dogs to maul naked Indians, and disemboweled other natives who resisted conquest”. During Columbus’s second voyage, he kidnapped up to 1,500 Arawak people and shipped 500 to Spain, where 300 were sold into slavery. The other 200 died along.”

Columbus initiated the violent process of colonization, enslavement, and genocide. His actions helped transform these lands into a world where prisons, orphanages, and locked doors exist, and where children and the elderly suffer from hunger, neglect, and exploitation. This is exactly the kind of truth that many institutions try to silence.

October 12 now, is a day of resistance, dignity, hope, memory, healing, and celebration of life because we know a different world is possible.

This ceremony was originally celebrated around harvest time, in July or August. In the church’s efforts to forcibly replace our indigenous ways with Catholicism, the church attempted to merge it with All Saints Day and move it to November. It is celebrated alongside Christian theology, but Día de los Muertos remains ours. Originally, there were 2 celebrations, one was community-wide, the other was celebrated at home.

The ritual is celebrated in Mexico, in the homes of those who brought it over as they migrated to the US, and wherever danza groups exist.

Although the ritual has merged with Catholic theology, it still maintains the basic principles of the indigenous ritual, such as the use of skulls, marigolds, offerings, songs, and dance.

Today, people don wooden skull masks called calacas and dance in honor of their deceased relatives. The Mexica and other Anahuac civilizations kept skulls to honor the dead and displayed them during the rituals. The skulls were used to symbolize death and rebirth. The skulls were used to call the ancestors, whom the Mexica and other Anahuac civilizations call the spirits back to visit during the month-long ritual.

One cannot discuss Dia de los Muertos without talking about death. To understand Dia de Los Muertos, one must understand how death is seen from the indigenous perspective. So here we go.

Death is not understood in the Christian world; in the Christian worldview, death is feared. The ancestors understood what the invaders could not: Death is sacred and should not be feared.

In the Christian religion, time and life are linear. There was a beginning, Genesis, and there is going to be an end, Revelations, which leads to a destination, heaven. Christians tend to see death as a punishment. Just before death, many ask “why”, or beg for more time, dwell on their mistakes, and/or missed opportunities.

They also see themselves outside the natural world. The natural world is something that was created for them to be dominated.

For Indigenous people, time and life is a circle. Life, death, and rebirth are one. We do not see ourselves outside of nature but deeply intertwined in the fabric of creation. We learned some of our most powerful lessons by observing the natural world. Death is a “natural occurrence and not an arbitrary punishment from a vengeful and blackmailing god”. Everything born is meant to die, and death is a fulfillment of everyone’s destiny. Death is not meant to be feared, death is the passage from one’s current form of existence into another. This is why we did not fear death. Death is natural, it is meant to be.

Not fearing death did not mean we had a death wish; it meant we avoided a meaningless death. What mattered was how we died. With dignity, pride, a fulfilled life, and not with fear and cowardice.

In many indigenous cultures, including the Mexica, when one was near death, they sang a death song/prayer. This was a ritual preparation for what came next. At death’s door, one would not beg for more time or have fear in their hearts. This is not how one should spend their last moments on earth. This death song/prayer was a celebration of their life, their community, a way to give thanks one last time. One acknowledges one’s finality, knowing the community would continue, one accepts their destiny, one offers their bodies back to our Mother as nourishment, just as our Mother nourished us. It is our final affirmation of one’s existence.

Indigenous life was communal life; what mattered was that the community survived (read Cuauhtémoc’s conditional surrender to the invaders, in Day of Resistance section). Indigenous peoples’ identity was not something that needed to be protected and preserved at all costs. In Western ways, the ego would not allow itself to become non-existent, even at the expense of one’s community. In other words, the continuation of the community is what truly mattered, as shown by Cuauhtémoc’s courageous actions.

When the invaders saw our altars, they mistook reverence for evil, because they had long lost the ability to see the sacred in anything not their own.

Due to the invaders’ fear of death, they saw our rituals as satanic and barbaric. they lacked the understanding of one’s destiny in this world. When our ancestors brought out the skulls, the invaders only saw what they feared, death; it reminded them of their mortality. What our ancestors saw in those skulls was the spirit of our loved ones. When the skulls came out, the spirits came to visit, they sang with us, they danced with us, they ate with us, they laughed with us. Those bones were the connection to the ancestors.

The ancestors did not sell the lands because they couldn’t understand property; they did not sell the land because it contained the bones of our ancestors, and one does not sell their ancestors.

The invaders had for a long time lost their ability to acknowledge with respect other cultures and religions. They have lost their way. They saw anything different as a threat, and when Western culture people are threatened, they react with extreme violence, as shown by their history. In their brutal attempts to convert our people to Catholicism, the priests tried to kill the ritual. But like the old spirits of the Mexica, the ritual refused to die.

On Day of the Dead / Dia de los Muertos, we build our altars. We dance, sing, pray, laugh, eat, and drink the night away. We remember them, we call them, and if we are lucky — if we are truly blessed — they come. For us, death is not an end.

There are many lies told about this day. We walk another path — the path of truth.

We have never forgotten our true Mother. No matter the names they gave her, no matter how many crosses they raised over our sacred spaces, Tonantzin, Our Revered Mother, lives in our blood, our songs, and our prayers.

On December 9, 1531, an Indigenous man named Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, on his way to mass, crossed the sacred hill of Tepeyac, not barren to us, but alive with her spirit. When a blinding light and unearthly music stopped him on that hill. There stood the astounding vision of a radiant woman, dark-skinned like us, saying to him: “My son.” She then asked him to go to the Spanish Bishop, Juan de Zumárraga, to have a temple built on Tepeyac Hill.

Days later, on December 12, as Juan Diego cut across Tepeyac hill to find a priest for his dying uncle, La Virgen appeared again. She told Juan Diego to gather the blooming flowers and deliver them to the bishop as a sign of her message. He gathered up the flowers in his mantle and hurried off to complete his mission. When Juan Diego spilled the roses before Zumárraga, an image appeared on his cloak: La Virgen Morena, the dark-skinned Mother, an undeniable message from that sacred hill of Tepeyac.

They say she is La Virgen de Guadalupe now, but we remember what they tried to erase on that sacred hill in Tepeyac. That hill, once the site of a great temple to the embodiment of that endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, the embodiment of the sacred feminine energy of the universe, Tonantzin, our true Mother of Creation. It is rumored that Bishop Zumárraga ordered the ancient temple of Tonantzin to be destroyed. Yet her spirit remained, cloaked in symbols the invaders could not deny.

By order of the Bishop, a small church was soon constructed on the site designated by La Virgen.

On this day, December 12, across Anahuac and beyond, millions of our people walk in song, in prayer, and in dance to honor La Reina de México. In our hearts, we know, it is Tonantzin we are honoring. We have never forgotten.

They built their churches. We have our memories.
They destroyed our temples. We built new altars in our hearts.
They tried to erase us. But we are still here — and so is She.

Payer to Tonantzin:
May the memory of our true Mother, Tonantzin,
bloom forever in the hearts of her children.
May our songs rise like the morning sun over Tepeyac,
and may we walk always in the sacred steps of our ancestors.
We are the earth, and the earth is us.

Every year on January 1st, we come together to honor the Zapatistas — not only for what they fought for, but for what they have preserved. Hope. Memory. Resistance. Dignity.

On January 1, 1994, while the rich and the elite politicians celebrated in their grand palaces. In the long-forgotten mountains of Chiapas, the earth shook, not from an earthquake, but from the footsteps of the Indigenous peoples rising. Three thousand fighters, made up of the Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolab’al, Ch’ol, and tens of thousands of their bases of support. They stood together and shouted to the world: Ya Basta — Enough is Enough! There would no longer be a Mexico without us.

The Spirit of Resistance the EZLN carried with them from the mountains that day did not begin in 1983, or the FLN, nor in the 1968 massacre at Tlatelolco, nor even in the flames of 1910’s Revolution. That spirit of resistance against oblivion began the moment the invaders set foot on Anahuac, and it has never been extinguished.

NAFTA had just been ratified, an agreement drawn up by rich men with no voice given to the farmers, the workers, the true heart of Mexico, it became clear: this was another death sentence for the Indigenous of Chiapas.

Harvested in the U.S., NAFTA would flood the Mexican markets with cheaply priced crops whose yield was increased with the aid of pesticides, advanced machinery, and propped up and protected by insurance and commodity subsidies. The small farmers of Mexico did not stand a chance, many left for the cities to look for work. Again, they could not compete against all the other farmers who did the same.

Capitalism only works if new markets are created. And new markets needed to be created for American products.

The protections for the poor were removed, creating uncertainty and death. This is what neoliberalism does. And it is one of dozens of reasons that led the indigenous people of Chiapas to rise.

The nations of these continents were birthed in the blood of enslavement, and if people resisted, the answer was genocide. Today we live in a world where, too often, the only way the oppressed can be heard is through the use of violence. Not because we are violent, but because when human beings are treated like obstacles to profit, resistance becomes survival.

The history of the U.S. echoes this, from Indigenous genocide to slavery to the civil rights battles. History also shows that when dignity is denied, violence, sadly, becomes the road to change.

The Zapatistas tried every other path first.
They voted, but ballots were lost to corruption.
They marched, but were met with batons and bullets.
They pleaded, and were answered with lies.
Only when every peaceful road was closed did they lift their weapons in rebellion.

For years, the EZLN prepared in secret, not because they sought war, but because they understood it was being forced upon them.

NAFTA sped up their timeline, but not their resolve. They understood their enemy and prepared to fight a protracted war against a state armed with U.S.-made weapons destined for the War on Drugs and soldiers trained at the School of the Americas.

The EZLN had something more powerful: they had history and conscience on their side. The Mexican military fought to destroy the EZLN, the EZLN fought not to destroy Mexico, but to save it.

The EZLN knew the Mexican soldier was not the enemy, but the pawn of neoliberal puppeteers. They saw a brutal truth: the elites had sent Indigenous against Indigenous, brother and sister against brother and sister, just as they had since the first days of the invasion in the war against the Mexica.

The war lasted 12 days, but the struggle continues. Mexicans and many from around the world demanded peace. The EZLN did what the Mexican government would never do: they listened to civil society. The government showed it could not be trusted as it engaged in a low-intensity war while training and arming the paramilitaries of Chiapas.

In Mexico and around the world, if you are poor, you are ignored; if you are indigenous, you are not seen; if you are both, you do not exist.

Because this was never only a war for Chiapas.
It was a war for dignity.
It was a war for memory.
It was a war for the right of humanity to exist beyond the violent exploitation of neoliberalism.

The Zapatistas reminded us:
Humanity and neoliberalism cannot coexist. One must destroy the other.

We know which side we stand on.