It's been seven years. Mexico has changed since January 1, 1994, that long- ago dawn when the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, rose against the mal gobierno, the pestilential government, and captured seven towns in the southern state of Chiapas. That event changed not only Mexico, but the world.

The trigger for the uprising, decades in preparation, was the first day under the regime of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. Pilot project for the WTO, this free trade area of Canada, the USA, and Mexico was a beachhead for neoliberalism, and a death knell for the Mayan farmers of Chiapas. Tending small plots, they could not compete with agribusiness corn imported from the US. Small farmers, in an impoverished Third World region, faced starvation in the face of the "supermarket to the world," and the world had no idea.

The whole world knows now. The Zapatistas invigorated a nascent revolution, one that hit the First World on the streets of Seattle on N30, 1999. Nobody should have been less surprised than the Mexican Nation.

Eighty-one years after Emiliano Zapata was betrayed and murdered by his erstwhile revolutionary allies, the EZLN proved that Zapata Vive!. In Chiapas, Zapata is reborn every year, with the corn. When urban intellectuals like Marcos went into the highlands in the 1970s and '80s to educate the natives, they became the pupils. The "Marxist" ELN found something deeper, even more revolutionary among the "undeveloped," people of the countryside: a revolutionary doctrine based on something more than economic theory; a much more ancient heritage of simple human struggle, of dreams, community, cool water drawn from a well at dawn.

In the synthesis, the ELN, the Army of National Liberation, became the EZLN, and Emiliano Zapata, culture hero of the true revolution took his rightful place at the head of the hierarchy. In the international fallout from the struggle, the networks of the anti-globalization movement were born.

And Mexico started to crack. The PRI, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, after 81 years of authoritarian rule, toppled last July beneath the avalanche unleashed by the Chiapas uprising.

Things are changing, but they haven't yet changed. The same words were spoken over and over again on the streets following the elections: "The PRI and the PAN are the same." Nothing has changed. It's neoliberalism all around. The right-leaning PAN, the National Action Party, won the presidency--not the PRD or other progressive or revolutionary forces.

It's no surprise that the wealthy, connected PAN was the faction best able to immediately capitalize on the PRI's disintegration. The PAN won this round, but the heretofore disenfranchised, in the voice of the Zapatistas, continue to command a central role in national politics.

In the final weeks leading up to the election, the military and Federal Police tightened their chokehold on EZLN positions. The PRI-sponsored paramilitaries stepped up their grassroots campaign of terror. It was widely assumed that, should the PRI's candidate, Labastida, win the election, Zedillo would seek to wipe out the Zapatistas, providing a "clean slate," for his successor.

Fox promised to settle the conflict in Chiapas in "fifteen minutes," by pulling back the army and honoring the San Andre's accords, penned five years ago and immediately abrogated by the PRI government. The Zapatistas, through the voice of Marcos, took Fox up on his promise, warned the PRI that they would never surrender, then fell silent for five months.

Within hours of taking the presidency on December 1, Fox took steps to lessen tensions in Chiapas. He ordered the removal of 53 army checkpoints, began legislative activity toward ratification of the San Andres accords, and subsequently recalled military troops from Amador Hernandez (an isolated town which has seen daily demonstrations against the occupying soldiers for over a year) and other hot spots.

Marcos, as usual, provided a reality check. Commenting on the third anniversary of the massacre at Acteal on December 22, he reminded us of the reality behind the photo ops. "The dirty war which made [the massacre] possible continues. The counterinsurgency doctrine which inspired it continues still. The paramilitary structure which carried it out remains untouched. The military protection of the assassins continues. Despite what the lavish government publicity campaign says, nothing has changed. There is nothing in place in Chiapas which would ensure that Acteal will not be repeated."

But, optimism persists. Peter Brown, a US citizen, and other foreigners expelled by the PRI have been allowed to return to Mexico. Brown is a schoolteacher, expelled as a troublemaker by the PRI for the crime of building a school in Chiapas.

Fox has also appointed several respected progressives to his cabinet, including Jorge Castenada as Foreign Secretary. Castaneda is a veteran leftist critic of the PRI's brand of neoliberalism. He was formerly associated with the leftist PRD, before he jumped ship to support the Fox candidacy.

Even in Chiapas, one of the last holdouts of the old style colonial era, the part of Mexico where the revolution never happened, things are changing. The PRI was unseated there, one of its historically firmest strongholds, in the statewide elections held in August. Pablo Salazar, a non-partisan candidate fronting a coalition of a half-dozen parties, spanning the left to the right, outpolled the PRI governor by a large margin. Salazar has also set to work to end the conflict in his state.

While the early signs are hopeful, the problem confronting Fox is the same that confronts any politician trapped between the peoples' desire for liberty and the dictates of big money. Unless the policies of neoliberalism are abandoned or severely altered, the Chiapas problem, like similar problems of humanity the world over, will remain intractable. It is almost certain that the Zapatistas will endure, and the neoliberal program will continue to face indefatigable opposition.