As part of The Zapatista Wi-fi Rebellion program, join us on Friday September 20 for the screening of The Sixth Sun: Mayan Uprising in Chiapas (1996), followed by a skype with artist Skawennati of Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC), a research network of artists, academics and technologists investigating, creating and critiquing Indigenous virtual environment.

Friday, September 20 at 7:30PM
Doors at 7PM

The Sixth Sun: Mayan Uprising in ChiapasDirected by Saul Landau, 1996, 56 minutes

Before dawn on New Year’s Day, 1994, startled tourists and residents of the Mexican state of Chiapas watched as armed Mayan Indians declared war on the government, seizing eight towns and sending shock waves through Mexico’s political establishment. Calling themselves the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, these crudely armed peasants set in motion events that ripped away a modern face of prosperity and stability to reveal “the other Mexico.” Visually interweaving the Mayan past and the Mexican Revolution with contemporary reality, this documentary portrays an epic confrontation pitting impoverished peasants against large landowners and government forces in Mexico’s poorest state. The video features rare in-depth interviews with Subcomandante Marcos, the ski-masked “poet warrior,” amidst scenes of the mountains and jungles from which the rebellion sprang, as well as with other leaders and soldiers in the Zapatista movement. Other protagonists include Bishop Samuel Ruiz, Mexico’s outspoken practitioner of liberation theology and defender of indigenous rights; peasants on estates they have occupied; angry ranchers forced from their land; activist layministers; conservative Catholics who charge the Bishop with inciting revolution; government officials and army officers; and the notorious guardias blancas, the landowners’ private armies.