What do you think of when you imagine revolution? If you came up through American schools, you probably think about muskets and redcoats, armed struggle and minutemen. That's how the American Revolution went down, and for the last 250 years, we've been enjoying sovereignty in the states, thanks to a successful revolution. But these days, it would be near impossible to pull off any kind of defection from the ruling power of our National Government. And bloody battlefields are so 50 years ago, anyway... our ideas about revolution should probably get updated for the twenty-first century.

One group that's doing just that are the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico. Chiapas is one of the poorest regions in Mexico, and in 1994 when things were looking bad, a group of rebels tried to engage in armed conflict to take control of Mexico in the name of the poor and underrepresented. However, they engaged in military conflict with the state and couldn't win. Eventually a ceasefire was brokered by local churches, and the Zapatistas reconsidered their approach.

The Zapatistas as a group now "demand that the revolutionary armed forces not intervene in matters of civil order", in other words, they are opposed to violence that could injure or disrupt people from their day to day activities. As a group, this means that they need to find nonviolent ways to spread their political ideas. One way to do that is by holding tight to the small amount of land that they control and asserting autonomy, independence from other forms of government, insistence upon self-rule. Fighting against a nation-state is a game that most revolutionary groups simply can't win.

But some games (and now I mean 'games' more literally) are actually really productive for a group like the Zapatistas. For instance, a Zapatista-Milan soccer match. In a letter to the manager of Italy's Inter-Milan soccer team, one of the region's most popular teams, Zapatista leader Subcomadante Marcos wrote "I challenge you to a match against a team from the Zapatista national liberation army, at a time and a place to be determined. Given the affection we have for you, we're not planning to submerge you in goals". The team in Milan has been supportive of Zapatistas efforts toward self-government, donating food and water in the past. Soon they may allow the revolutionaries to step onto an international stage, making their efforts known to potential supporters around the world, making their movement more powerful without firing any weapons.

The month from September 15 through October 15 is Latino Heritage Month.  I already investigated a little bit of Mexican history with my post on Luchadores last week, and today I'm going to keep looking into the history of sports in Latin America.  In the region of 'Mesoamerica', which stretches from central Mexico to Honduras and Nicaragua, there are a number of giant, mysterious athletic stadiums where Mayans, Aztecs, and other pre-Columbian civilizations played what scholars have come to call "The Mesoamerican Ballgame".  In reality, the ballgame was probably a family of similar ballgames played throughout the region that elements in common with soccer, volleyball, and racquetball.