Cafè Zapatista

“Would you like to support a libertarian society by drinking coffee?

“Sir, madam, would you like to drink a good coffee to support the struggle of the Mexican Mayan people who made it and help them out of poverty? They do not want to be forced to emigrate illegally to the USA, and don’t want to have bosses, but they make a very good coffe, it’s the best quality organic coffee in the world! And it costs to you less than the coffee you buy in the supermarket! Would you like to try it?”

“The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed into legislation on Jan. 1, 1994 was to have ignited Mexico’s ascent into a modern, First-World State.

But in the southern state of Chiapas on this New Years Day, an “armed uprising of indigenous peoples stole the media spotlight, exposing Mexico’s massive social inequalities and the exclusion of the country’s indigenous population from it’s economic development,” (Latin American Press, Jan. 20,1994).

These insurgents calling themselves the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), claimed that they were fighting for the rights of indigenous Mexicans as they captured four towns in Chiapas, (where Mayan descendants are concentrated). The Mexican government had been denying the existence of a guerilla movement as an attempt to present itself as stable and prosperous during the NAFTA negotiations. Since the media attention was on Mexico due to NAFTA, the EZLN strategically chose this time to rise up and tell the world that NAFTA was a death certificate for the ethnic people of Mexico. As Zapatista Comandante Ramona was quoted “We were not taken into consideration when NAFTA was negotiated, never again will there be a Mexico without us!”