Exponential Distribution

"We add our voice to these, we multiply our voices with them. We will continue to be an echo, we are and will continue to be a voice".

Indeed the media can become your publicity medium, when a news report shows the Zapatistas to an interested party he/she can simply log on and find one of the thousands of related sites to discover more. As all these sites exist in parallel, linked to one another it won't belong before the user comes face to face with unfiltered, pure Zapatista media content.

Naomi Klien estimates that there are 45,000 websites based in 26 countries across the Internet devoted to the Zapatista. Each person who becomes interested and constructs a site becomes another parallel distributor of both the pure and filtered Zapatista message. All the voices on the net, inspired as much by the pure images and messages as each other built up the massage and ensured it would never fade.

As we have noted, the Zapatista's message was broadcast across the Internet with an equality of access. Not only was this equality of access in a single language, it can be found in Spanish, French, English and a host of other languages. For example, with the growth of translation tools such as Babelfish, even non-Spanish speakers can follow events on the Spanish language EZLN.org site.

After over 70 years in power the PRI party fell to Mexico's new President Vicente Fox, elected amongst other things, on a platform to broker a peace deal with the Zapatista. His first official U.S. visit began not at the White House, but interestingly in Silicon Valley. Is this a significant point in the Government battle for the virtual information was, that the new president moves to court opinion within the powerhouse of Internet technology before visiting any others?

Conclusion: Post-modern Guerrillas

"This movement, of the colour of the earth, is yours and because it is yours it is ours. Now, and this is what they fear, there is no 'you' and 'we' because we are all the colour of the earth."

Such was the appeal and power of the Zapatista filmmakers that the government saw stopping such activities as a vital action. A result of which The Dallas Morning News reported on September 15, 1999 of a court verdict overturning the expulsion of some 150 foreign activists such as the experience of Mr. Hansen who "...was travelling with a group that was teaching Indians to use video cameras when immigration officials stopped him in the town of Altamirano on Feb. 18, 1998. Two immigration agents arrested him and turned him over to four heavily armed men in civilian clothes."

Uniquely and unlike other revolutions, the Zapatista fought not to replace the power structures of the government with their own ideology, but for the right to exist alongside it. In common with this view, the Zapatista message exists alongside other media outlets and outside their area of operation. They have maintained their position, not through coercion, violence or financial power but though communication, openness and innovation. At every step of their struggle they have been one. Their view neither excludes any media nor is subservient to it. In the same way the web-filmmaker does not need to fight for viewing slots at a multiplex or on TV, the filmmakers message exists in parallel with the mainstream media, indeed the filmmaker uses the mainstream media as a resource of ideas and images. (Indeed, in keeping with this, observers noted how the Zapatista message is constructed from diverse ideas, some mainstream and some not; Marxism, Anarchism, Mexican & Cuban revolutionaries and of course Indigenous Indian.) Thus the filmmaker can in the true post-modern sense simultaneously be commenting -on and creating-new content.

It is no surprise that the New York Times called the Zapatista's uprising 'the world's first post-modern revolution.'

Further Information

Rhizomes, Nomads, and Resistant Internet Use by Stefan Wray
http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/RhizNom.html

Interview with Carmen Ortiz
http://www.laneta.apc.org/telemanita/bull13_art1.html

The Dallas Morning News September 15, 1999
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/mexico/observers/hansenRuling.html

Filmmaker Nettie Wild
http://www.collectionscanada.ca/women/002026-720-e.html

Vicente Fox in Silicon Valley
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,42541,00.html?tw=wn20010321

zapatistas.org!
http://www.zapatistas.org/

Cinema Verite in America: Studies in uncontrolled Documentary, Stephen Mamber
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=4423

First World Ha Ha Ha, The Zapatista Challenge
http://www.citylights.com/pub/catalog/BCfirstworld.html

The French Resistance 1940-1944 Raymond Aubrac
http://www.amazon.ca/French-Resistance-1940-1944-Raymond-Aubrac/dp/285025567X

Only the Paraniod Survive by Andrew S Grove
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Only-Paranoid-Survive-Andrew-Grove/dp/1861975139

Naomi Klein's website
http://www.nologo.org/