During the 1980s and 1990s, Latin America caught up with international economic and political trends. Neoliberalism had become the only alternative, and technocrats — elected thanks to repressive strategies that destroyed left institutions and organized unions — implemented it. These conditions were enacted in a context of rising inequality, where poverty was presented, as a Mexican finance minister declared, as “just a great myth.”

By the early 1990s, backlash to these developments began to build, creating a strong opposition movement. Peasant and indigenous groups animated and sustained a challenge to Mexico’s neoliberalism.

On January 1, 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) declared war on the state. The Zapatistas emerged from the disastrous neoliberal policies that affected all of Latin America. The middle class found itself in an increasingly precarious situation, while the poor not only saw their capacity to subsist severely undermined, but were completely ignored by the government and a significant proportion of society. In his first public appearance, Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos affirmed: “We are not interested in public office nor have any kind of political power, we want justice for the indigenous peoples.”