Director Nettie Wild takes the viewer to rebel territory in the southwestern Mexican state of Chiapas, where the EZLN live and evade the Mexican Army.
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Background:
In 1993, the Mexican Federal Government signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States, effectively communicating to the Mexican people that allowing unimpeded American business penetration of Mexico's economy would promote Mexico from the Third-World to the First-World. Skeptical of these claims and their resulting implications, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation simultaneously arose in armed insurrection throughout the rural region of Chiapas on New Year's Day 1994—capturing four municipalities (25 per cent of the state); to date, Chiapas is economically and politically, socially and militarily unsettled.
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]. Thus, according to the documentary, Chiapas's indigenous Maya people said: "Basta! [Enough!], we will take ourselves underground and wait to rise up, like corn". In Mayan traditional lore, the Maya are 'the people born from maize'.