Bread City Basketball

A common feature of Zapatista gatherings—along with food, dance, music, and fireworks—is basketball. Both male and female ski-masked participants populate the basketball court while more senior level Zapatista commanders (including both women and men) meet in nearby tents.
-Charles Fruehling Springwood, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 30 (2006): 364.

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (ELZN) is a revolutionary group active in Mexico since 1994, when they tried to overthrow the Mexican government. When the coup failed, they established a base in Chiapas and focused their attention on creating a microcosm of a new Mexican society. In the Zapatista model, individual communities are responsible for their own sustainability and defending themselves, and the government has minimal influence over the country’s resources. The Zapatistas, who are mostly indigenous Mexicans, are not a political party; they want to reconceptualize the entire Mexican political system. Though armed, they have abstained from using their weapons since the 1994 uprising, and they give liberal arts students and Rage Against The Machine fans huge boners.

Photo by Bastian