Here celebrants and critics debate what Carlos Fuentes has described as the world's first 'post-communist rebellion.' It documents the electrifying effect the movement has had on leading figures and activists in the intellectual, political, and literary worlds, especially the remarkable synergy between leading writers, novelists, and journalists and Subcomandante Marcos, the enigmatic, pipe-smoking and balaclavered leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, who seems like a character out of a 'magical realism' novel.

From Tom Hayden, Marcos 'is a living rejection of the maxim that revolutionaries become conservative through aging itself. He becomes a symbol of resistance beyond youth. He is an armed Jack Kerouac, still on the road.'