The nationalist EZLN insurrection arose in response to the NAFTA-induced "dollarization", and consequent (further) impoverishment, of Mexico's economy; the NAFTA did not provide wage increases or prices decreases[citation needed].

[citation needed] In 1994, the EZLN's indigenous Chiapanec soldiers marched from the jungle to the towns in armed insurrection to reclaim their land from the elite ruling minority.

For the Zapatistas, "El Encuentro" [The Encounter] against Neoliberalism and for all of humanity, was a peaceful mode of obtaining international support and resistance aid.

Three thousand people attended El Encuentro, among them Spanish anarchists, Italian communists, Latin American revolutionaries, Chiapanec Indians, and Superbarrio [Super Neighbourhood], the caped professional wrestler and social activist.

In northern Chiapas, the paramilitary mercenaries have, at gun-point, forced out thousands of people from their villages, farms, and ranches, thus rendering those Mexicans refugees in their own country.

A month later, among three thousand people, she watches the horse-mounted Subcomandante Marcos appear from the jungle, holding a flagpole bearing a small red flag, he was "Reminiscent of the hapless Don Quixote — the fictional Spanish knight who fights for impossible dreams, and can't distinguish reality from what's inside his head".

The viewer must interpret and determine, for themself, the true nature — social, political, military, of the Zapatista National Liberation Movement and its army, the EZLN.