Tentara Pembebasan Nasional Zapatista

The EZLN claims to represent the rights of the indigenous population, but also sees itself and is seen as part of a wider anti-capitalist movement. The neozapatistas oppose globalization, or neoliberalism, the economic system advocated by the Mexican presidents from 1982 to 2000. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), is an example of neoliberal policy, and spawned the 1994 Zapatista revolution because those who would later become the EZLN believed that it would destroy the rights of Mexico's impoverished indigenous community. The group takes its name from the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata; they see themselves as his ideological heirs, and heirs to 500 years of indigenous resistance against imperialism.