The poverty-stricken people of Chiapas are still marginalised and experiencing great hardship, 17 years after rebellion.
Seventeen years after rallying cries for land and freedom sparked the Zapatista rebellion, a quiet mist cloaks the mountains of Chiapas state in southeast Mexico.
Unlike previous years, there are no major celebrations, no marches or fiery public speeches by rebels fighting for the region’s long-neglected indigenous people.
Hailed by the New York Times in 1994 as the "first postmodern Latin American revolution", some commentators in Mexico and beyond now consider the Zapatistas a spent force, a rebellion with strong rhetoric and little capacity, lacking the ability to deliver beyond its rural base.
"The transformations the movement tried to make did not arrive," says Gaston Garcia Flores, a professor of philosophy who studies social movements at the Universidad del Mar in southern Mexico.
But, after being pushed around for more than 500 years, others think it is naïve to consider the Zapatistas down for the count.