Lead vocalist Zack de la Rocha wrote the song after a visit to Chiapas in southern Mexico.

The song has a wide variety of references, most notably the destruction of the Aztec Empire by the Spanish (see the article Five suns) and the Zoot Suit Riots of Los Angeles in 1943.

The video, directed by Peter Christopherson and produced by Fiz Oliver at Squeak Pictures, opens with shots of a dead indigenous Mexican girl (IMDB Melissa Herrera); her arm starts bleeding and the blood shows the words "Trickle down".

Statistics illustrating the plight of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation are shown from a film projector being run in a morgue.

Military footage of United States arms arriving in Mexico and the Zapatistas themselves are interspersed with this and shots of the band playing in front of a brick wall in about a 10 by 10 space.