| Summary: | Taniperla is an Indian community in the Chiapas region of Mexico, one of many which have been occupied by the federal government since declaring themselves autonomous. Seventy percent of the population are Zapatistas, supporters of the peasant revolution. The rest support the government, or PRI. Filmed by Belgian Human Watch observers who have the dangerous job of watching for infractions from the armed forces of the Mexican government, this is a close up look at the hopes and dreams of the "revolutionaries", an impoverished group descended from workers on the "fincas", basically slave plantations run by Europeans in Mexico. The villagers tell what life was like on the fincas before the Mexican Revolution, where "patrons" were the arbiters of life and death. Life is not much better now; the Indians are underpaid for their crops and receive no aid from the central government of Mexico which claims to represent them. The film follows the painting of a mural by the community in celebration of the anniversary of their declaration of autonomy. All around one sees the threatening entrenched armed forces. A thousand paramilitary troops suppressed the demonstration, imprisoning many villagers and deporting the foreign observers. But the spirit of the mural lives on. It has been reproduced as a symbol of the movement and stands now in Brussels, Barcelona, Paris and San Francisco.
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