The words caught my eye as I walked through Oaxaca's town square: Zapata Vive, Su Lucha Sigue (Zapata Lives, his struggle continues). This and other slogans were painted on the several-hundred-years-old walls of Oaxaca's state government palace.

This wasn't hit and run graffiti done in the middle of the night. The authors were nearby, around a hundred of them, along with hand painted banners and a sound system. A gas fired cook stove was pushed up against one of the building's supporting pillars. A makeshift latrine, a bucket enclosed in a screen of sheets stood a little ways off. One man softly played ballads on a guitar while small groups chatted and others rested on flattened cardboard boxes along the wall. In contrast to any similar situation in the Land of the Free, there wasn't a police officer in sight. Just another planton in Oaxaca's Zocalo.

This demonstration sparked my immediate interest not only for the relatively rare direct references to Zapatismo such as never again a Mexico without us but also because the government had just spent considerable effort cleaning the vestiges of previous demonstrations from the palace walls. In fact, they weren't quite done. Twenty yards away three men were diligently chipping away at some stubborn paste left behind from a previous poster. Like painting the Golden Gate Bridge, it seems that cleaning the walls of Oaxaca's Government Palace is never finished, merely completed in time to start again.

The accompanying banners indicated that the campesinos belonged to CODECI, the initials for the Committee for the Defense of the Citizens. Most interesting of all, the banners encompassed issues important to several of Oaxaca's 16 indigenous ethnic groups. In a place where people from neighboring villages often have trouble cooperating to address common problems, the sight of banners expressing the concerns of diverse groups throughout the state was an intriguing sign of unity.

After I found a group spokesman my first question was, "What is the reason for this demonstration?" I knew this was going to be an enjoyable if not altogether informative encounter when he answered, "Because the government is a bastard and we are fed up."

Eventually I managed to determine they were indigenous Cuicatecos from San Andres Teotilalapan, a town with an adult population of about 500 people in the Sierra Madre del Norte. This mountain town is high enough up that, even in tropical Oaxaca, February can be just as cold as it is in Seattle.

Among the graffiti and banners were the common demands for the ouster of their local legislator. "What is the problem with your legislator?" I asked. "Well, for one thing," replied the spokesman, "he won the election through fraud. Like George Bush in the United States when everybody knows that in reality Gore was the winner. Right?"

They might live in a remote community but they are apparently well informed.

Unlike a multitude of other demonstrations denouncing electoral fraud, in this case both the winning and losing candidate belong to same party, the PRI. In many parts of Oaxaca the PRI is still the only party that exists. And, as I am learning, some PRI politicians are considered to be honest and sincerely seeking reform. (Just as I am learning that many politicians from the progressive PRD are considered to be hopelessly corrupt).

Typically the protesters were accusing the local PRI machine of manipulating the vote to fraudulently elect the legislator. This politician, they say, is the patron of five cacique families who, through wealth, derived political influence; and, through simple thuggery, steal community lands and resources.

As it turned out, the state governor wasn't in town that day to hear their complaints. He was in Mexico City conducting his own planton demanding the federal government come through with promised funds to build a superhighway across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. But the governor's rather symbolic planton lasted only 12 hours. These somewhat more hardy campesino will maintain their encampment several days while their chosen representatives and those of CODECI are inside the building meeting with the governor's staff.

The roots of CODECI began in the 1950s when two large dams were built in the Papaloapan river basin. In the words of CODECI's founders, "These projects, far from bringing benefits to our region, dislodged thousands of indigenous families from their lands, initiated the erasure of our race, and corrupted the traditional values and cultures of these indigenous towns." The flooding of vast areas to create the reservoirs began decades of conflict among and between the Chinantecos and Mazatecos in the region as farmers struggled for control over the remaining lands.

In 1996 a group of indigenous Chinantecos influenced by the Zapatista uprising of the EZLN got together to address these problems in a new way. CODECI was created as a self-defense organization through the efforts of several communities working in common. The founders reasoned that together "it was possible to put pressure on the government authorities in a more organized way." They were done struggling among themselves over diminishing resources and likewise finished with waiting quietly for government promises that never came.

Setting to work, CODECI pressured the state government to intervene to retrieve community lands that had been taken over by caciques, a task that no individual group of campesinos could have accomplished.

As CODECI successes continued (they claim over 1,000 hectares retrieved from caciques to date), the organization attracted more interested communities. As the organization strengthened, they began undertaking public works and environmental projects of their own design or that had gotten stalled in the government bureaucracy. Additionally they have created their own human rights committees and have allied with other similar campesino organizations in nearby regions. Among their current concerns is pressuring the federal government to reimburse the Chinanteco and Mazateco communities whose lands were affected by the construction of the Papaloapan river dams.

Today in Oaxaca's Zocalo it's too early to tell what will come of the current planton. Meanwhile CODECI is planning a march on Mexico City in April to press the federal government for restitution for the lands affected by the dams. Additionally they have declared their solidarity with the campesinos of Texcoco and Atenco (outside Mexico City) fighting against the proposed airport slated for their farmlands. They are pressing for the federal congress to pass a true indigenous rights law, and have demanded that the government locate and prosecute those responsible for the murder of human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa.

CODECI, like its sister organizations throughout Mexico, represents a change perhaps deeper and more profound than the mere changing of political parties resulting from the most recent presidential elections. This is real people planting real democracy with their own hands and on their own lands.